“Fathead:” Virtual Production (Almost) Completely in the Cloud
Adrian Pennington
TL;DR
The Entertainment Technology Center at USC (ETC@USC) has released the first part of a white paper exploring the state of the art in virtual production.
Multi-studio production experiment “Fathead” aims to push the boundaries of in-camera VFX and on-set virtual production.
The initiative is co-produced by AWS, Amazon Studios, and partners including Epic Games, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, ARRI, Arch Platform, Blackmagic and Perforce.
One significant achievement was uploading original camera negative (OCN) to the cloud in hours — a process that would normally take days.
A multi-studio production experiment, dubbed Fathead, aims to push the boundaries of in-camera VFX and on-set virtual production. It’s co-produced by AWS, Amazon Studios, and partners including Epic Games, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, ARRI, Arch Platform, Blackmagic and Perforce.
Another partner — also funded by Hollywood entities — is the Entertainment Technology Center at USC (ETC@USC), which has released the first part of a case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond,” detailing production of the 20-minute short film.
“Everything on this production was done in the cloud, minus the shoot on set,” explains ETC@USC head of virtual & adaptive production Erik Weaver, executive producer of Fathead. “We did some very innovative work, ingesting ARRI Alexa RAW to Amazon S3 buckets on the AWS cloud in real time, which had never been done before and I don’t think has been done since.”
The short was shot on Amazon’s Stage 15 virtual production facility in Culver City and the team benefitted from AWS support engineers, who wrote custom scripts for the real-time cloud ingest.
“It was actually writing to Amazon faster than it was writing to our local backup drive on stage,” Weaver notes.
The paper, “Cloud Computing: Growth without Bounds,” “elaborates on the tools and processes pieces to show how we did it,” Weaver explains. Uploading the original camera negative (OCN) to the cloud would normally take days, but the process was condensed through a combination of the AWS workflow, the technical capabilities of Stage 15, and the digital expertise of the crew.
“The idea was to use a short film as a paradigm for production processes of the future,” Weaver said.
Some 350 people worked on the project, which has received an NAACP Image Award nomination. The cloud-based AWS workflow employed by the Fathead team allowed for usage-based pricing, avoiding the need for large upfront infrastructure investments.
“We used cloud computing as a model for on-demand access to a configurable pool of online resources during the lifecycle of a film,” said Weaver.
Written and directed by Craig Patterson, the film is set in a junkyard with elaborate backgrounds that would have been costly to physically build, not to mention dangerous for the young actors involved. That made the project an ideal case study for a volume stage in which the environments were all built digitally, by teams in Greece, New York and Los Angeles.
Perforce Software’s Helix Core version control allowed artists in the different locations to work on the same scene simultaneously via the cloud. Arch Technologies built the virtual machine that allowed the various tools to interoperate seamlessly and safely in the cloud.
While section one covers the cloud-first aspect of Fathead, further sections of the white paper to be released shortly deal with reducing echo in a volume and another examines the current state of virtual production.
A.J. Wedding from Orbital Virtual Studios discusses how virtual production is transforming film & television production.
February 15, 2023
The ‘70s-Inspired Visuals of Benjamin Caron’s “Sharper”
TL;DR
For his debut feature “Sharper,” director Benjamin Caron wanted cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen to be the “Princess of Darkness” in homage to cinematographer Gordon Willis.
Willis famously shot “The Godfather,” “Klute” and other movies in next to no light; in the case of “The Godfather” that creative choice was driven by Marlon Brando’s makeup.
“Sharper” is a grifter movie that revels in the use of shadows and underexposed long takes.
Prior to “Sharper,” Caron had notable success directing episodes of “The Crown” and Disney’s Star Wars episodic “Andor.”
Not knowing what will happen is the ultimate tease for a grifter movie like Sharper — the darkness just adds to the mystery
The British director of Sharper, now streaming on Apple TV+, wanted his DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen to become the “Princess of Darkness” in homage to cinematographer Gordon Willis, who famously shot The Godfather and other movies in next to no light.
Rather obviously, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson takes a romantic view of using film, unkindly describing the digital alternative’s look as “the plastic dullness of a toss-off digital Netflix thriller.” With Bruus Christensen’s film aesthetic, however, he warmly welcomed “the grain and light of what movies used to look like.”
In truth, Willis’ approach to lighting — particularly in the initial scene of The Godfather — occurred to him only at the last minute as a means to counter the strange makeup Marlon Brando was using. Just 20 minutes prior to the shoot, the only technique he could think of was to use a top light. Ultimately, this decision sealed the look of the movie from that point on. But maybe the die was already cast with his moody aesthetic for Klute, which he shot the year before, in 1971.
But Lawson’s coupling of the use of film with an old-fashioned con artist tale is understandable, clumsy as it might be, as Sharper is a thriller that revels in the use of shadows and underexposed long takes.
The director, Benjamin Caron, was new to feature films but had notable success in directing episodes of The Crown and Disney’s brilliant Star Wars episodic Andor. But for Sharper, he had asked Bruus Christensen “to think about these sophisticated compositions of using light and darkness,” as he told SlashFilm’s Ben Pearson. “But probably one of the biggest reference points for me was Klute. There was just something about the atmosphere of that film that I’ve always loved.”
Describing Willis’ work, Caron says, “He just basically infused every frame with meaning and atmosphere, and there was a beautiful delicacy to it. So it was a heavy leaning into the feeling of that film.” (As an aside, this 1971 film has been having a hell of a cultural resurgence as of late, BJ Colanelo notes at SlashFilm, with director Matt Reeves also citing the film as a massive influence on The Batman.)
Caron also referenced The Color of Money, Drive and especially Fincher’s Seven. “What I loved about that film is that you were so claustrophobic for such a long period of time. You were held in that city. It was all mainly shot at night and it was rain, but then right at the very end of the film, you suddenly had this big desert expanse where there was nothing else.”
He could see that same scenario working for Sharper, he told Pearson. “We had all these characters penned into Manhattan, where the sight lines are limited and you can rarely see the horizon. But then, as in Seven, I love the end where suddenly you’re in this open space where you can see nothing but sky, and ultimately the characters have nowhere to hide.”
Apple’s own description of Sharper does harken back to thrillers of the past: “No one is who they seem. A neo-noir thriller of secrets and lies, set amongst New York City’s bedrooms, barrooms and boardrooms. Characters compete for riches and power in a high stakes game of ambition, greed, lust and jealousy that will keep audiences guessing until the final moment.”
Pete Hammond’s review of the film for Deadline describes the pull of this new swindler story. “Seeing the nifty grifter drama Sharper reminded me how rarely we encounter this kind of clever cat-and-mouse game that might fall into the noirish genre but really relies on diving into a world filled with characters who reveal slices of their lives that keep changing moment to moment,” he writes.
“It is the kind of movie I find enormously difficult to review because its ultimate success for a viewer is just watching it unfold, beat by beat, never quite knowing exactly where it is heading but still glued to the screen to find out,” Hammond continues.
“Written in a non-linear style and separated by chapters identified on the screen with character’s names, the focus keeps changing as we see events unfold, and eventually intertwine, as the story takes twists and turns and then twists right back again.”
Julianne Moore in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Sebastian Stan, Julianne Moore in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Julianne Moore in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Julianne Moore in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Julianne Moore in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Briana Middleton in “Sharper.” Cr: Apple TV+
John Lithgow in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow in “Sharper,” CR: AppleTV+
Justice Smith, Briana Middleton in “Sharper.” Cr: Apple TV+
But it is director Caron, in his first feature, who kept the lid on what the characters were thinking, not wanting to clue the audience into the deceit. “Deception is definitely the defining feature of this film, and I’m always interested in character’s motivations and how people talk or flirt or lie or impersonate in terms of getting what they want,” he said to Pearson.
“I thought it was really important in this film that we never had a nod and a wink to the audience at any moment that something was about to happen. Sometimes I think there’s a tendency, whether it be from the storyteller or even from the performer, to show too much.
“And I think right from the very beginning, even in conversations with the actors, we wanted to hold all of that back. Because I really remember reading the script and I really remember those moments where I was floored and I was genuinely shocked and surprised. So it was really important they held onto that integrity.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Cinematographer Felix Wiedemann uses the ARRI Alexa LF to create a naturalistic look for Netflix’s hit psychological thriller series.
June 21, 2023
Posted
February 7, 2023
Creating the Lo-Fi, VHS-Vibe Visuals for “Skinamarink”
TL;DR
In a world of crystal-clear 4K smartphone videography, the detuned aesthetic of indie horror feature “Skinamarink” is even more distinct.
Working under a no-budget budget of just $15,000, writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball found that micro-budget limitations fueled his creative vision.
Ball used his short film “Heck” to develop a technique the indie filmmaker calls “filming by implication.”
This technique demanded a set of steadfast rules: “We never see someone’s face. We avoid showing people on screen for too long. Whatever dialogue is delivered is always delivered off-screen. We never go outside. We never leave the house.”
The trailer for Skinamarink shows just how much work was involved in making the indie horror film look so bad. In this world of crystal-clear 4K smartphone videography, a detuned aesthetic is even more distinct and perhaps welcome. Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball absorbs any sense of clarity out of his movie, visually or psychologically. This could be down to the no-budget budget (which reached a final tally of $15,000), but in fact proclaims the skills of the indie filmmaker and his small crew.
Skinamarink has been acquired by horror streamer Shudder and is currently in theaters via IFC Midnight. It will debut on Shudder later in 2023.
FilmmakerMagazine’s Natalia Keogan describes the incredibly loose narrative. “It follows young siblings Kevin (Lucas Paul) and Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) as they patter around their family’s strikingly ordinary middle-class house in the dead of night circa 1995,” she writes.
“Their parents are nowhere to be found, all of the doors have mysteriously vanished and the lights eventually stop working. While this phenomena is enough to chill any child, their well-being is most threatened by a supernatural presence that beckons the siblings to obey increasingly disturbing requests.”
Keogan’s description continues in nightmarish terms: “Skinamarink does not rely on typical genre conventions, barely even showing the protagonists in full, opting for shots of disjointed limbs and obscured faces. The film’s bone-numbing terror comes from somewhere deeper and more genuine than a cheap jump-scare, like an early childhood nightmare extracted from our collective subconscious, transferred to a VHS tape and screened on an old CRT television set at three a.m.”
In his interview with Ball for RogerEbert, Isaac Feldberg was keen for the filmmaker to unveil his production techniques. “Ball found that micro-budget limitations fueled his creative vision, necessitating all manner of trick photography and unconventional angles to mimic a child’s-eye view.”
His short film Heck was a proof-of-concept exercise for what was to come. “Through doing my YouTube series, I developed a technique of filming by implication, instead of showing. So, instead of showing actors, I was doing point-of-view shots or filming different parts of the room while we had audio off-screen. And, after a while, I thought, ‘Maybe I could do a feature like this…’”
Ball also detailed some of his steadfast shooting and framing rules, a practice not uncommon in episodics. “I set rules in place that I wasn’t allowed to break. We never see someone’s face. We avoid showing people on screen for too long. Whatever dialogue is delivered is always delivered off-screen. We never go outside. We never leave the house. We’re always in the house.”
With those visual constraints in place Ball looked to the audio to seal the horror. “I didn’t just want Skinamarink to look like an old movie,” he told Feldberg. “I wanted it to feel and sound like one. I wanted to go really [hard] with that. I didn’t just want to make the dialogue sound like it was recorded on an old microphone. I wanted the audio to feel like an old, scratched-up re-taping of a film that wasn’t preserved from the ‘70s — lots of hiss, lots of hum.”
Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink.” Cr: Shudder
Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink.” Cr: Shudder
Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink.” Cr: Shudder
Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink.” Cr: Shudder
Writer-director-editor Kyle Edward Ball’s “Skinamarink.” Cr: Shudder
Ball’s idea for the visuals was to shoot as near to darkness as possible and then grade to further distress what he shot with his DP Jamie McCrae. He explained to Lex Briscuso at Inverse how they created the look. “When I was doing my YouTube channel, I was also gravitating toward the lo-fi look. I thought ‘Why can’t I make a movie like it’s from the ‘70s? Or the ‘50s? The ‘30s?’ It evolved into, ‘What if I did an entire movie in this style?” So I started writing my script,’” he said.
“Working with my amazing director of photography, Jamie McCrae, I said, ‘OK let’s get a really good camera that’s really good in low light and see if we can just use practicals.’ I set some rules for myself. We can only use practical lights: flashlights, light coming off a TV, a lamp.”
Another big issue were the scenes set in pitch black, Ball told Briscuso. “Obviously, we couldn’t shoot 100% pitch black unless we used infrared, so we developed this technique of putting a sun gun on top of the camera, putting a blue filter over it, and grading with it,” he said.
McCrae selected the Sony FX6 as the main camera, Ball recounted, adding, “I forget what lenses we used, but the great thing about a modern digital camera — and that one in particular — is that it almost sees in the dark, almost better than the human eye, with somewhat minimal artifacting or grain.”
But when Ball reached the post-production stage, he discovered that he couldn’t edit the film and then age the material after the fact. “I had to do it in tandem,” he told Briscuso. “The mood is so intrinsically tied to the lo-fi aspect of it that it was impossible. So I did it step by step; that’s really why the editing took four months.”
To make the footage appear old, Ball employed a package of 16mm film grain overlays he already had on hand. “In editing, I picked different overlays, graded and played with the levels shot-by-shot, and I just did that until it looked right and read well. It wasn’t just one overlay I looped a hundred times. I took my time to make sure there were enough varieties, so you didn’t subconsciously say, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this overlay before.’
“As far as the special effects, a lot of it was just simple old Hollywood tricks that you can get away with if you’re using a layer of grain over it. There’s a few parts where things appear on the ceiling, floating. That was literally just me holding it up and photoshopping myself out. The doors and windows, I just Content Awared them out.”
Sam Theilman‘s review of the movie for Slate is perhaps the most discerning, “I think Skinamarink is the first movie I’ve seen that is shot in such a way as to show only what its child protagonist can understand. I can’t imagine another film doing this successfully, or even wanting to see this particular film again, but it’s a remarkable achievement,” he writes.
“It evokes the nameless dread of barely verbal childhood so thoroughly and uncompromisingly that it remains frightening long after it ends, not because it forces us to question the rational world, but because it makes us remember a time before we could understand anything at all.”
Variety’s William Earl has the scoop on what’s next for Ball. “He’s currently kicking around two ideas that both sound like a logical extension of Skinamarink. One is a take on the Pied Piper legend, the other about three strangers who all see the same house in a dream.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Jordan Peele taps Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to build a custom IMAX camera rig to capture the wide-open landscapes of “Nope.”
October 15, 2023
Posted
February 7, 2023
“Kendrick Lamar Live in Paris” Brings Cinematic Production to a Streamed Event
TL;DR
The video production of the recent Kendrick Lamar concert in Paris employed multiple digital cinema cameras in a livestreamed outdoor broadcast.
The production relied heavily on Sony equipment, including the company’s digital cine flagship Venice camera in both Super 35 and full-frame 6K configurations.
Other equipment included an ARRI Trinity rig spanning the area from the stage to the floor, a spidercam, and a robotic rail-cam system “that acted like a sniper,” able to boom up and boom down precisely while maintaining a beautiful frame above stage height.
Camera technology that started out in the upper echelons of cinema have now become so accessible that the use of digital cine cameras and lenses is being use to photograph sports and music concerts too.
Normally, such cameras are used sparingly for cinematic depth of field cut-aways in live sports or in glossily post produced video concert footage.
The video production of the recent Kendrick Larmar tour took this to another level by using multiple digital cinema cameras in a livestreamed outside broadcast.
Perhaps that isn’t surprising given an artist of Lamar’s caliber. The Big Steppers: Live From Paris, part of Lamar’s “Big Steppers Tour,” was streamed live exclusively on Amazon Music and Prime Video from the Accor Arena in Paris this past October.
Kendrick Lamar’s The Big Steppers Tour LIVE from Paris.
“We didn’t want to just use a prefab camera plot,” Ritchie explains. “We really wanted to understand what would be dynamic, what would be a great storytelling device, what lenses would feel more immersive versus objective.”
The amount of technology used for the shoot was astonishing, as detailed in the Sony case study. An ARRI Trinity went from the stage to the floor for specifically choreographed moments. Two additional Steadicams, one on stage for fluid live moments, and one in the audience, captured moments with fans. They had a robotic rail-cam system “that acted like a sniper,” able to boom up and boom down precisely while maintaining a beautiful frame above stage height.
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers: Live from Paris” livestream concert event. Cr: Amazon Music
They also had a spidercam for very specific cinematic moments, a 25-foot tower camera and Technocrane gliding slowly over the audience that captured waves of hands as it made its way to the stage.
Principal photography was from 16 Sony Venice cameras and Sony’s new cinematic pan-tilt-zoom camera, the FR7.
Ritchie used the Venice at 6K in full-frame, along with lenses like Signature Zooms or Fujinon Premistas and primes.
“The beauty of full-frame is you can see a nice wide shot of a stadium or an arena, but stay focused on the person right there in front of you,” he said. “To be able to control someone’s attention with more shallow depth of field in certain moments is critical to the narrative. I can show you 80,000 people and a massive stage, and by using a shallow depth of field I can ensure the audience stays laser focused on the artist while still offering an epic sense of depth and grandeur.”
He also used Venice in Super 35 mode, allowing him to employ longer cinema zooms and converted broadcast lenses that can offer both tight and wide coverage from all angles.
“One of the biggest challenges in live spaces is distance to the subject,” says Ritchie. “Feature films happen between eight and 20 feet. However, it’s often challenging to maintain the inner ring of close coverage in a live space, especially when you have massive stages and catwalks in excess 120 feet, while trying not to impede on the audience experience. Having that second ring of coverage is crucial to maintain coverage throughout the film.”
Live Grade LUTs were applied, adjusting exposure and black levels and accounting for any variances between lenses and the environment, which as you can imagine means battling with constantly changing extreme contrasts, bright LED screens, and highly saturated lighting.
“We’re doing that with 16 to 20 cameras in the live space where every one of these needs to be as close to perfect as possible,” adds Ritchie.
“When you’re shooting for a film, you have the luxury of time and an edit. You can just shoot Log and tweak the exposure and color later. But in the live space it’s real-time. In line LUT boxes apply our base look and our truck RCPs control Iris as well as subtle variances between cameras. The cinematographer, DITs, LD and video engineers are all working in perfect sync, safeguarding the image through every crucial step.”
Donald and Stephen Glover bring season 3 of “Atlanta” to FX and Hulu in what critics call “a true American masterpiece.”
March 10, 2023
Posted
January 30, 2023
“Poker Face:” The Sunday Mystery Movie But It’s Streaming
TL;DR
“Knives Out” and “Glass Onion” director Rian Johnson talks about his exciting new Peacock case-of-the-week series “Poker Face,” starring Natasha Lyonne as a mystery-solving fugitive.
Johnson discusses the challenges of writing a mystery series where the main character has the superhuman ability to recognize when someone is lying, and the importance of crafting standalone TV episodes even in an increasingly serialized era of TV.
Johnson calls this mystery subgenre a “howcatchem,” where it’s very much about the detective versus the guest star of the episode.
To make new television, it helps if you’ve watched a lot of old television. That’s a lesson evident in Poker Face, the crime-thriller series created by Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne, which makes its debut January 26 on Peacock.
Lyonne — creator and star of Netflix series Russian Doll — plays Charlie Cale, a woman employed by a casino with a preternatural ability to tell when people are lying.
As Johnson, the writer and director of Knives Out and Glass Onion, explained to Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times, the self-contained installments of Poker Face are a deliberate throwback to a style of TV storytelling that Johnson grew up with in the 1970s and ‘80s.
“That’s when I had control of the television,” Johnson said. “And it was typically hourlong, star-driven, case-of-the-week shows.”
They weren’t only detective programs like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, he said, but also adventure series like Quantum Leap, The ATeam, Highway to Heaven and The Incredible Hulk, which were notable for “the anchoring presence of a charismatic lead and a different set of guest stars and, in many cases, a totally different location, every single week.”
Those ever-changing elements kept things fresh and surprising, he said.
In an interview with Alison Herman for The Ringer, Johnson was asked about similarities between Poker Face and Columbo. “I’d include The Rockford Files and Quantum Leap, but also Highway to Heaven and [the 1978 TV series] The Incredible Hulk,” he told Herman. “It’s kind of got the DNA of all that stuff. And that’s the stuff that I was sitting on the rug in front of my family’s TV watching reruns of every single afternoon as a kid. It’s the TV that I was raised on.”
“The ‘DNA’ of these shows is certainly there when you watch an episode of Poker Face play out,” Ernesto Valenzuela writes at SlashFilm. “Bill Bixby’s man-on-the-run character of Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, who helps bring justice to whatever town he ends up in, is recreated with a much less gloomy angle with Charlie’s fugitive status. And much like Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files, Charlie is also down on her luck, living in a mobile home in the first episode where she is very much not an officer of the law. Poker Face thrives off of its influences, and the structure’s repetitive nature isn’t a detriment to the show — it’s actually a big reason viewers should tune in every week.”
The show’s resemblance to Colombo is a good thing for fans, Amos Barshad notes at Wired. Johnson, says Barshad, “tiptoed” around the issue at first but the jig was up following an interview in Vulture with The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle: “I was probably bugging [Johnson] about something and he texted, ‘Want to talk to you about this TV show I’m doing with Natasha Lyonne. It’s basically Columbo with her as the detective,’” Darnielle said.
“To everyone who loves Columbo, this is a great thing,” Barshad writes. “Even beyond the unique format, with the murderer reveal happening first — which means it’s a howcatchem, not a whodunit — Poker Face embodies the rough, throwback, blaringly uncool charms of its spiritual antecedent. Like Columbo, Cale is often going after the rich and powerful, the kind of people who think they shouldn’t have to atone for their sins. Like Columbo, she’s constantly underestimated, a trait she finesses to her ends. Peter Falk’s portrayal of the fumbling detective is an all-timer; the way he pivots from buffoon to razor-sharp gumshoe is a thing of beauty and joy, which means Lyonne has her work cut out for her if she wants to put Cale up on the mantle with Columbo in the TV Sleuths Hall of Fame. But in the handful of episodes available so far (a new one dropped today), it’s clear Lyonne — salty, resilient, irrationally confident — is presenting a very unique kind of crimefighter.”
In his review for The New York Times, chief television critic James Poniewozik calls Poker Face “the Best New Detective Show of 1973,” noting that Lyonne “has one of TV’s most distinctive presences, with an old-soul rasp and a hipster-next-door bearing that’s simultaneously down-to-earth and cosmic.”
He adds: “The logo may say Peacock — the streaming service that premieres the series on Thursday — but the vibe says NBC weeknights in the 1970s.”
The series, Poniewozik says, draws you in with its retro style, “but the vintage echoes are also deeply thematic. The ‘70s loved a beautiful loser, like James Garner’s Jim Rockford, the ex-con private eye whom the world gave the bum’s rush no matter how many cases he cracked.”
Poker Face is not a whodunit but an “open mystery” because the audience starts out each episode by seeing who did it, how, and why, before Charlie begins to investigate. Johnson himself calls this mystery subgenre a “howcatchem,” where it’s very much about the detective versus the guest star of the episode, as Johnson also confirms to Brandy Clark at Collider: “These are not whodunits, these are howcatchems. Show the killing, and about Natasha [Lyonne] vs. the guest star.”
As Clark points out, the benefit of these types of shows is that a viewer can jump in at any time, without wondering or worrying if they need to see the previous episodes to understand the story or the plot.
Of course, Columbo is the key reference point and an acknowledged part of Daniel Craig’s character Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out mysteries. Johnson told Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall that he binged the entire series during lockdown.
“My big revelation from bingeing it is, I wasn’t coming back for the mysteries. Although the mysteries are fun, I was coming back to hang out with Peter Falk. And in that way, I feel like those shows have as much in common with sitcoms as they do anything else.”
He added, “It’s not really about the story or the content. It’s about just hanging out with somebody that you like, and the comforting rhythms of a repeated pattern over and over with a character that you really liked being with. That’s kind of what I saw when I watched Natasha in Russian Doll, that made me think this could be interesting.”
Lyonne also said that she loved characters such as Columbo, Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye and Dennis Franz’s Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue, as reported by Deadline’s Peter White.
Speaking at NBCUniversal’s TCA press tour, Lyonne said that Charlie is “floating above a situation trying to crack a riddle, but also an everyman who has their nose to the grindstone and figuring out the sounds of the street.”
Once Johnson had decided to make her a human bullshit detector, rather than a detective or a mystery writer, he realized he had a problem, but this became the key to unlocking how the show might unfold.
“How was the show just not over within the first five minutes, if she can tell when people are lying?” he told Rolling Stone. “I had her give a speech in the pilot about how it’s less useful than you think because everyone’s always lying. It’s about looking for the subtlety of why is somebody lying about a specific thing. And we found really fun ways to play that at different episodes going forward.”
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Hong Chau as Marge in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Chelsea Frei as Dana in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Brandon Micheal Hall as Damian in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Simon Helberg as Luca in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
John Hodgman as Narc/Dockers in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Judith Light as Irene Smothers and S. Epatha Merkerson as Joyce Harris in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
Dascha Polanco as Natalie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Peacock
John Darnielle as Al, Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K. Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
Chuck Cooper as Deuteronomy and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
Chloë Sevigny as Ruby Ruin and G.K Umeh as Eskie in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
POKER FACE — “The Orpheus Syndrome” Episode 108 — Pictured: Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale — (Photo by: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock)
Luis Guzman as Raoul and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr. and Benjamin Bratt as Cliff Legrand in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Sara Shatz/Peacock
Jack Alcott as Randy, Charles Melton as Davis, and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
Danielle MacDonald as Mandy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock NUP_197591_00014-
Lil Rel Howery as Taffy in “Poker Face.” Cr: Karolina Wojtasik/Peacock
Adrien Brody as Sterling Frost Jr in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Carus/Peacock
Dascha Polanco as Natalie and Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale and Megan Suri as Sara in “Poker Face.” Cr: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face.” Cr: Phillip Caruso/Peacock
Although Johnson is red hot and you’d think people would be biting his hand to work with him, he says pitching a more old-fashioned TV format got push back.
“I was unprepared for the blank stares. And then the follow-up questions of, “Yes, but what’s the arc over the season?” I think there is right now this odd assumption that that’s what keeps people watching, just because there’s been so much of that in the streaming world that I think people equate the cliffhanger at the end of an episode with what gets people to click ‘Next.’ But TV before incredibly recently, was entirely in this episode mode. So I know it can work because I grew up tuning in every day for it.”
One reason it’s harder to do episodic case-of-the-week stories is the expense and the production challenge. For example, you keep have to bringing in new guests and visiting new locations.
“Holy crap, it was a headache,” Johnson admits to Rolling Stone. “I don’t think we even realized what we’re up against. No standing sets. No recurring characters besides Natasha and occasionally Benjamin Bratt. But we’re very purposefully going for the Columbo approach of big fish guest stars. So every single one of these episodes, we try and get somebody very exciting to play either the killer or the victim. And it was a lot.”
Indeed, the cast list across the season includes Adrien Brody, Ellen Barkin, Nick Nolte, Stephanie Hsu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ron Perlman, Chloë Sevigny, Lil Rel Howery, Clea Duvall, Tim Blake Nelson, and many more.
Asked during a Q&A panel at the Winter Television Critics Association Presentation whether he writes specifically to those guest stars, he replied: “In the room, sometimes we’d have a placeholder actor, and it would end up being them, or surprisingly someone else. A benefit of this subgenre is that it is the guest star’s episode, and you see them go head-to-head with Natasha.”
Johnson continued to sing the praises of television in front of the ballroom full of television reporters and critics — saying he preferred the “pace” of this newfound process vs. film. Each hour-long Poker Face episode took about three weeks (one for prep, two for shooting) to complete. Compare that with making one film over the course of “several years,” as he put it.
“I loved that in each episode we’re in a different environment, it’s a whole new cast— it’s like making 10 mini movies,” Johnson told IndieWire’s Tony Maglio. “I literally dove into it like it was one of my movies. I really jumped completely into the deep end of the pool.”
Johnson has previously directed for TV, notably on two episodes for Breaking Bad including the show finale “Ozymandias.” Episode two of Poker Face, which he directed, was shot in Albuquerque.
“I haven’t been back there since we shot ‘Ozymandias,’” he told Rolling Stone. “It was so much fun being back in town. A lot of the same Breaking Bad crew were on our crew, and it felt like a little homecoming.”
Johnson explained to Angela Watercutter at Wired that while Poker Face does have a throughline, any given episode is a standalone. That was “a hugely conscious choice,” he said, “something that I had no idea was gonna seem so radical to all the people we were pitching it to. The streaming serialized narrative has just become the gravity of a thousand suns to the point where everyone’s collective memory has been erased. That was not the mode of storytelling that kept people watching television for the vast history of TV. So it was not only a choice, it was a choice we really had to kind of fight for.”
Johnson discussed director Robert Altman’s influence on the pilot episode of Poker Face in a Q&A with Joshua Encinias for MovieMaker Magazine:
“Altman’s Nashville was definitely a big reference point for me when I was approaching how to shoot the pilot. I will say each one of the episodes very much has its own personality. Colombo was set in Los Angeles, but he was diving into a different profession every single time, based on what the killer did. There’s an anthropological element to it, where you’re doing a little deep dive into a different world every time. That’s very much a part of the show going forward and we allow ourselves, tonally, to give ourselves over to that. There’s an episode, for instance, set in a regional dinner theater with Ellen Barkin and Tim Meadows that’s absolutely hilarious and very comedic in tone, almost like a Noises Off style. The one I did with Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set in this snowed-in motel within the Rockies and it’s almost more like a Coen Brothers horror movie. But yes, absolutely, in the pilot I was looking at a lot of Altman. Also in terms of the looseness of the style of shooting. It seemed like a fun route to go.”
Another Altman film also provided influence in Poker Face. “Janicza Bravo directed one of our episodes and I think she put a very subtle, intentional California Split reference in her episode,” Johnson said. “We talk about that movie a lot on set.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Editor Bob Ducsay, ASC on the layers of structure and sleight-of-hand behind writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out: Glass Onion.”
January 31, 2023
Posted
January 29, 2023
“Troll:” Norway’s Motion Blur Makes a Modern (Ancient) Kaiju
TL;DR
Pushing aside “RRR” in the global marketplace, Norway’s “Troll” has become Netflix’s best performing non-English film.
Partly inspired by “King Kong” and Godzilla films, “Troll” employs many classic monster movie tropes with a distinctly Norwegian spin.
The character design for the titular troll was inspired by paintings by Theodor Severin Kittelsen, one of Norway’s most popular artists.
Espen Horn, producer and CEO of production company Motion Blur, said it was important that the production use Norwegians as crew, SFX and VFX vendors as much as possible, “because we wanted to show the world that this was genuinely a Norwegian or Nordic film.”
Troll from Netflix has seen some highly impressive viewing figures since its arrival on the platform and quickly became its best performing non-English film. This breakdown comes from Naman Ramachandran at Variety: “With a total of 128 million hours viewed and still counting, the film has taken the top spot on the non-English Netflix Top 10. It is in the Top 10 in 93 countries including Norway, France, Germany, the US, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico.”
Monster movies have always had a wide fan base and Troll has all the attractions and tropes those fans like — a cityscape destruction, believable and well-executed VFX, a credible folklore backstory, and a monster with feelings and a purpose. Something that Renaldo Matadeen picked up on in his review for Comic Book Resources.
“The remains of his tribe got left in a palace under the Royal Palace, which means the troll king’s domain has been desecrated. So, he’s stomping his way to Oslo to destroy the place for what happened to his family and to crush the symbol of Christianity, politics and corruption.”
Yes, Troll was partly inspired by King Kong, including Godzilla vs. Kong, but don’t forget Cloverfield with its clever “monster in a city” reality. But one of the most important aspects of the production was to keep it very Norwegian notwithstanding the monster action at its core. Espen Horn, producer and CEO of Motion Blur, explained the vision. “It was a big and important dream for us. That we should use Norwegians as crew, SFX and VFX vendors as much as possible because we wanted to show the world that this was genuinely a Norwegian or Nordic film,” he said.
“That was very important as even as the film has a classic monster genre formula to it, as some people claim, it was important to us to maintain originality in terms of the characters, mythology and the nature of how we are as people. I think the audience were happy that we kept the Norwegian originality.”
Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kris, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen, and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm, Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, and Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen as Andreas Isaksen in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as Captain Kristoffer Holm in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann and Anneke von der Lippe as Berit Moberg in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Gard B. Eidsvold as Tobias and Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann in writer-director Roar Uthaug’s “Troll.” Cr: Netflix
Half-jokingly, Espen saw that owning the Troll story included some gentle reprisal for a fellow Scandinavian country’s appropriation of another folklore legend. “It was after Finland ‘stole’ the copyright of Santa Claus from Norway. Finally, we could copyright the Troll and insert some Norwegian DNA in to the story,” he said.
“It was essential that the people as well as the Troll were the heroes. Very often when you watch a monster movie it feels like explosions and the fights are more important than the love of the characters or the creature.”
Again reviews bought in to the sympathy for the monster, this from Noel Murray at the Los Angeles Times. “As with many other films about lumbering beasties, Troll alternates between making the big guy terrifying and sympathetic. It’s to the credit of Uthaug and his special effects team (as well as the refreshingly unfussy Espen Aukan screenplay) that this troll inspires such conflicted emotions and isn’t merely menacing or laughably goofy.”
It’s also to the production’s credit that the positive environmental messages baked into the story survived without the feeling of being spoon fed any kind of propaganda and without diluting the monster thrill ride. “We tried to do it in our own Norwegian modest fashion,” Espen demurred.
Jesse Hassenger at Polygon agreed on the lack of a Hollywood ponderous third act in his review. “But there are plenty of advantages to shedding Hollywood-approved bloat while maintaining a kind of gee-whiz energy. Specifically, it resembles Emmerich’s 1998 version of Godzilla, reconfigured for greater speed and efficiency.”
Motion Blur is the production company behind Troll and over the last ten years have been making films and TV including two shows that were signed up for Netflix before Troll, the series Post Mortem and feature Kadaver. Espen, however, was sure it was the right time to attempt a huge monster movie with Scandinavian VFX houses of such quality like Denmark’s Ghost and Copenhagen Visuals, the Norwegian Gimpville and Sweden’s Swiss International. “We realized that with these Scandinavian facilities we had the ability to realize our dreams of creating such a monster, it seemed like the right time to do it.”
Espen describes the origins of the Troll project. “Around ten years ago we were developing a Troll story with another director. Roar Uthaug, the eventual director of Troll, was also developing a similar idea for a film. For various reasons both productions had to be stopped.
“But eventually we got together around three-and-a-half years ago to make a Troll movie. He had a very particular idea of how the story should evolve and had carved out the story and started working with screenwriter Espen Aukan.” The script was written fairly quickly and Motion Blur started to finance it.
Originally Troll was to be financed as a movie theater event with support from the Norwegian Film Institute, “We started to finance it as a typical cinema movie but then Netflix came on board — they bought so much into our vision for the film and how to accomplish it. They were very accommodating to fulfil this vision; it was actually a fairly easy choice to go along with Netflix and then not do a theatrical release.”
It was a 55-day shoot, which isn’t very long, but compared to Norwegian films is on the high side. “Shot in seven different locations including Oslo, so for the production it was very much a road movie in that sense. In one place for three or four days then move the 150 crew and cast to the next location. All were quite difficult to reach. Either up in the mountains or down deep inside a tunnel or a cave. But we got so much help from the local community including neighbors, farmers, engineers, even helping with extras.
“To shoot in rural Norway was a fantastic experience. It was extremely rewarding that when you come to a small place the whole community gathers up and are so supportive. We also had fantastic help from the Norwegian army who were very accommodating in helping us first of all get it right in terms of language and rules and regulations as well as uniforms, guns and helmets, tanks etc.”
But what was Motion Blur’s inspiration for the creation of the Troll? They didn’t want the blundering and small cave troll from Lord of the Rings; in fact, Espen even derided them as “Hairless and stupid trolls.”
“For VFX we used Norway’s Gimpville, Ghost and Copenhagen Visuals in Copenhagen and Swiss International in Stockholm. The monster itself was partly derived from folklore. There is a famous painting by [Theodor Severin] Kittelsen who was one of Norway’s most popular artists, it was the painting that Roar Uthaug had as his inspiration. He always thought, ‘what would happen if we got a real troll walking in to Oslo down Karl Johan, how would everyone respond?’ ”
He worked with a Norwegian artist Einar Martinsen and they started conceptualizing the troll with that thought of Oslo in crisis from a giant creature.
But Kittelsen’s paintings set the scene, “The old Norwegian trolls had trousers, pine trees sticking out of their heads, had extremely large noses, were clumsy and a little bit stupid. We wanted a troll that looked badass but also would have the warm tender eyes of emotions, we wanted him to have memory to show feelings and emotions and the ability to camouflage itself.”
They presented their Troll design to Netflix and the streamer loved it, “We then started to work on the troll with Ghost who did most of the CGI on it. It was important that he was originated from Norwegian folklore — important to Norwegians and to Netflix. It was important that it had good heritage from the old Kittelsen painting and from the old fairy tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe from the 19th century.”
Big content spends, tapping emerging markets, and automated versioning: these are just a few of the strategies OTT companies are turning to in the fight for dominance in the global marketplace. Stay on top of the business trends and learn about the challenges streamers face with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Director S.S. Rajamouli’s breakout Tollywood hit “Rise Roar Revolt” is the first and only Telugu-language film to smash the US box office.
March 19, 2023
Posted
January 29, 2023
“M3GAN:” James Wan, Gerard Johnstone, and Jason Blum Know What You Want
TL;DR
Hit movie “M3GAN” has busted the $100 million worldwide ticket sales barrier on a $12 million production budget.
Director Gerard Johnstone was inspired by horror-comedies like Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s rom-zom-com “Shaun of the Dead.”
New Zealand actress Amie Donald played the demented AI and ended up doing her own stunts.
Perhaps it’s our underlying fear of what AI will lead to, or a horror jolt that we needed to kickstart our year, but the hit movie M3GAN is busting the $100 million worldwide ticket sales barrier on a $12 million production budget. Also, a generous PG-13 rating has lured in the teenage market with even younger kids finding a way into theaters to catch horror-comedy at its best.
Vanity Fair’s Julie Miller looked into the toy slayers and analyzed the genre. “The killer doll trope is nothing new — 60 years ago, a pigtailed doll in ribbons and ruffles named ‘Talky Tina’ took out an evil stepfather in a Twilight Zone episode,” she writes.
“In the decades since, there have been knife-wielding dolls, deranged puppets, demonic fetish figures, and diabolical porcelain dolls fronting horror films.” But maybe the effect is easily explained by Frank McAndrew, a psychologist who has researched the concept of creepiness.
“They have eyes and ears and heads and all of the things that normal human beings have,” explains Frank “But there’s something off — the deadness in their eyes, their blank stares. They’re cute and they’re supposed to be for children,” he says, but the human realism causes “our brain to give off conflicting signals. For some people that can be very discomforting.”
McAndrew further defines that dolls are especially effective horror-movie antagonists because murderous streaks seem so unlikely in a child’s toy.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of M3GAN is how a seemingly CGI-laced movie was made for only $12 million. The mid-sized budget was perhaps a consequence of shooting in New Zealand during COVID — since at the time the country hadn’t yet been exposed to the pandemic. But it was also due to the skills of a young local actress, Amie Donald, who played the demented AI and ended up doing her own stunts.
Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Allison Williams as Gemma in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Ronny Chieng as David in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Amie Donald as M3gan, Allison Williams as Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Cady in director Gerard Johnstone’s “M3GAN.” Cr: Blumhouse
Jen Yamato at the Los Angeles Times tracked down the actress’s movement coaches. “Casting local performer and international competitive dancer Donald, now 12, to physically embody M3GAN turned out to be fortuitous. Although it was her first film role, the actor, who has also since appeared on Sweet Tooth, was off book within a week and loved doing her own stunts. ‘She was just extraordinary,’ says director Gerard Johnstone,” Yamato reports.
“Working with movement coaches Jed Brophy (The Lord of the Rings) and Luke Hawker (Thor: Love and Thunder) and stunt coordinator Isaac ‘Ike’ Hamon (Black Adam), she developed M3GAN’s physicality, which becomes more humanlike the longer she’s around humans. She adopted barely perceptible movements — a slight cock of the head, a step a bit too close for comfort — to maximize the unsettling effect M3GAN has on people.”
Donald proved to the director how well she could do her own stunts and even on the first day of shooting, nailed the all-fours forest move you can see on the trailer after perfecting it at home. “All of a sudden we get this video from her mother, where Amie had just figured out how to do this on the carpet at home,” said Johnstone. “And she could run on all fours!”
CGI was definitely minimized in the movie, but WETA Workshop contributed additional designs to the film, and Oscar-nominated Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse of Montreal-based Morot FX Studios were entrusted to smooth out the joins of animatronics, puppets, posable and stunt M3GANs, as well as Donald herself.
Director Gerard Johnstone was also keen to bring a level of humor to the movie and find ways to echo his own experience of parenthood, as he told Gregory Ellwood at The Playlist. “But what I brought to it was definitely my own sense of humor and my own experiences as a parent. I wanted to put as many of my own struggles and anxieties and frustrations that I was having as a parent into this movie. Parenting in the age of AI and iPads isn’t easy.”
Speaking to Valerie Ettenhofer in an interview for Slash Film, Johnstone cited Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead as teaching him a significant lesson in style. “My big lesson from them when I first watched Shaun of the Dead… was just how seriously they took both genres,” the director shares. “If I was going to do this, I had to treat the horror as seriously as I did the comedy.”
Johnstone struck a balance between horror and comedy with his first film, Housebound, which he continued with M3GAN, Ettenhofer notes, “a movie that offsets its most violent and unsettling scenes with moments in which the titular android does a hair-twirling dance or breaks into spontaneous song.”
Johnstone also namedrops a few other greats that he considers fun horror touchstones. “I’m a big fan of Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell and The Evil Dead trilogy.” He also commends Wes Craven, plus the “very deadpan” films of Joel and Ethan Coen, which he says employ “just a very dry tone, but you can tell they’re secretly making comedies.”
All the film references in the world mean for nothing, however, when your movie becomes a litany of Internet memes, which M3GAN quickly generated. Karla Rodriguez at Complex put it to the director that once a part of your movie or a part of the trailer becomes a meme, you know you’ve struck gold.
“And they were amazing,” picked up Johnstone, “and I just couldn’t believe how many of them there were. But I thought they were giving too much away in the trailer of the dance scene. I was like, ‘I just want a hint of it, something weird happening to tease people.’ And Universal said, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And I didn’t know what I was talking about clearly because people just took it, recut it, put it to different music and it was just the gift that kept on giving.”
So where does that leave the psychotic M3GAN doll? A scary range of merch maybe, but definitely at least one sequel because, like artificial intelligence, we just can’t get enough of her. Producer Jason Blum has already said as much. “Blum did something he’d never done in his nearly 30-year career: He publicly admitted his desire to make a sequel before the movie even opened in theaters, Rebecca Rubin reports at Variety. “He just felt certain that audiences would instantly fall in love with M3GAN, short for Model 3 Generative Android, whose chaotic dance moves, pithy one-liners and killer tendencies turned her into an internet icon as soon as Universal debuted the first trailer.”
“We broke our cardinal rule,” he says. “I felt so bullish that we started entertaining a sequel earlier than we usually do.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Jordan Peele taps Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to build a custom IMAX camera rig to capture the wide-open landscapes of “Nope.”
January 25, 2023
Posted
January 22, 2023
Filming Under Fire: “Retrograde” and the Realities of War
TL;DR
The Oscar-nominated filmmaker Matthew Heineman travels to Afghanistan to capture the turmoil as American troops pulled out in August 2021.
The original intent of the film was for a holistic look at modern-day military deployment, then pivoted to tell the story of the final acts of the longest war in US history.
Heineman and his crew risked their lives to tell the story of the airlift from Kabul and its aftermath as the Taliban took control of the city.
Director Matthew Heineman’s latest documentary captures the final months of the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan. The film begins by covering the story of a group of Green Berets supporting the Afghan National Army. Once they are ordered to pull out, an operation referred to as “retrograde,” Heineman then focuses the film on a young Afghan general, General Sami Sadat, who is desperately fighting to protect his country from a Taliban takeover.
Produced by National Geographic, Retrograde launched at Telluride and was nominated for Best Political Documentary at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. The film also won the Producing Award at DOC NYC Feature and is on the shortlist for an Oscar nomination. The documentary feature is available for streaming on Disney+.
In military parlance, the term retrograde can mean several things, among them withdrawal from a war zone, but the ambiguity of the title is calculated.
“It’s a historical document of this final chapter in the war in Afghanistan,” the director tells Sophia A. McClennen at Salon. “It’s also an allegorical tale for a dynamic that has happened throughout history and will continue to happen long in the future: going into a country to fight a war, then leaving the country, and the effect that process has on everyone involved.”
Heineman is known for his Oscar-nominated doc Cartel Land and his narrative feature A Private War. He has also made docs about ISIS in Syria, the opioid crisis, and human trafficking. Each time, he explains, “I try to take this large complex subject that has already been framed by news headlines and stats and humanize it. I try to put a human face to it. And that’s certainly what I try to do with Retrograde.”
The intimacy and access in Retrograde resulted from a tenacious effort to embed with US Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets. The access was enabled by producing partner Caitlin McNally, but even then the process took years to be approved by the Pentagon.
By the time that happened, the United States was preparing to exit Afghanistan. Two months after the film crew landed in Afghanistan, President Biden pulled out the troops.
Heineman didn’t know what to do. “I have no film here,” he related to IndieWire’s Anne Thompson. “We’d been shooting for two months, and there’s no real arc to what’s happening.”
“It wasn’t a fait accompli that the Afghans were going to lose to the Taliban at that point, so there was a sort of blank of where this story was going to go,” he told Stephen Saito at Moveable Feast.
The filmmakers decided that Afghan General Sadat could emerge as a central character, and he agreed to cooperate. “We completely pivoted the film to focus on him and look at the end of the war through his eyes,” Heineman told Thompson.
The film vividly conveys the feelings of the Green Berets and their Afghan allies after President Biden’s announcement.
“There’s a scene in the film where they tell their Afghan counterparts that they’re leaving,” Heineman tells Matthew Carey at Deadline. “It’s quite a poignant scene where their faces all say more than words can ever say. That motif of faces was something that was very purposeful in the shooting of the film and the cutting of the film, really holding on faces for a really long time.”
He could have created a series: Heineman returned to the editing room with 1,300 hours of footage. Instead, he edited the story to 94 taut minutes.
Speaking again to Salon, he adds, “In interviews, people can lie, either because they’re nervous or they want to spin a narrative. But faces don’t lie. That explains the motif that we developed both in the field and also in the editing room of holding on faces for a really long time.”
Some critics have noted that the film looks slick, with a sheen and a composition that wouldn’t look out of place, in say, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
“Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
“Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
“Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
“Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
“Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
Variety’s Peter Debruge, for example, notes that Heinman “brings back hi-def vérité footage that looks sharper and more artfully framed than most Hollywood features.”
“Am I supposed to not hone my craft and grow as an artist?” Heineman responds to Salon. “To me, the aesthetics are really important. My goal always at every step along the way, is I want you to feel what it’s like to be in the control room as you’re calling in an airstrike or drone strike. I want you to feel like what it’s like to be in a Blackhawk helicopter as rockets are being shot at you. I want you to feel what it’s like to go to the front lines of a war zone as your country is crumbling and there’s a lack of communication and information.”
Heinman put himself in some life threatening situations but denies being an adrenaline junkie. “I’m not drawn to the danger,” he tells IndieWire. “I’m drawn to people who have big stakes. I don’t enjoy being shot at.. I guess I am drawn, but I’m not quite sure exactly why.”
He recounted the filming of a scene where he’s backseat in a helicopter in a particularly dangerous area. The Taliban began firing. He tells Dano Nissen at The Knockturnal, “When you’re in the helicopter and rockets are being shot at you there is no object button. There is no I want to go home. You are there. You’re in it.”
He continued, “In those situations the only thing I have agency over is my camera. And that is what I choose to focus on. I focus on framing and exposure. I’m mixing sound when I’m filming. Those are things I can control. If I’m going to risk my life to get a scene I’m going to get it right.”
Accompanying Heineman were veteran combat cinematographers Timothy Grucza and Olivier Sarbil, supported by field producers and translators, but the scenes depicting the chaotic and hazardous exodus from Kabul airport were shot by just Grucza and Heinman alone.
“Never in my career have I ever felt something as strong as what I felt being at the Abbey Gate as thousands of Afghan civilians were desperately trying to flee, and as 18-year-old Marines, who weren’t even alive during 911, were making these impossible ‘Sophie’s Choice’ decisions on who to let in and who not to,” he relates to Moveable Feast. “The Taliban was watching at gunpoint a hundred yards away, as ISIS was circling around us in suicide vests, waiting to attack, which happened 12 hours later in that very spot. All I could think about was, ‘What have we done here?’ ”
Of course, he could escape with his American passport back home to NYC. He understands the privilege of his circumstance and the responsibility that comes with it.
“On one level, I think the film is a historical record of this turning point in history, but it’s also an attempt to get people to care and feel just a little bit more and understand this conflict in a way they might not have otherwise.”
To Salon, he adds, “I think the film is a living, breathing document of the massive chasm between the ideological reasons for going to war and the reality of those who are actually fighting it in real time.”
This poetic, languorous (and award-winning) documentary features a family effort to rescue and heal black kites in Delhi as the city deals with social upheaval.
“The Territory” follows the Indigenous Amazon community the Uru-eu-wau-wau as they protect their land from aggressive deforestation efforts.
January 22, 2023
Posted
January 19, 2023
The Bonkers Format for Peacock Series “Paul T. Goldman”
TL;DR
Peacock’s docuseries straddles an uneasy line between real life, true crime and satire. “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” director Jason Woliner tells the incredible and possibly unbelievable story of one man and his very bad second marriage.
The series dramatizes a real-life story and alternates between the polished narrative footage and documentary footage of the production itself, along with interviews and a fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité style.
The project took 10 years to get off the ground, in large part because the show’s format and content is so uniquely bizarre.
“In 2012, a man named Paul T. Goldman tweeted at me,” is how director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) begins, discussing his new Peacock series. “He said that he had an incredible story to tell and had written a book — and a screenplay — about it. He asked for my help bringing it to the screen.”
A decade later and the resultant Peacock series Paul T. Goldman is judged to be “hard to describe, impossible to forget, and one wild ride,” by Consequence TV’s Liz Shannon Miller, who says the bar for the “weirdest TV show of 2023” has been set pretty damn high.
Ostensibly about a man’s failed marriage and claims that he was a victim of his wife’s scam, this is less a shocking tale of sex and crime and more a fascinating portrait of a man and his ambitions: his desire for fame, for revenge. The series depicts its central character “through a lens that is alternately dark, strange, bizarre, and, more often than not, very funny,” Shannon Miller adds.
From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, Jason Woliner as Jason Woliner, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
Paul T. Goldman and Jason Woliner on the set of Peacock series “Paul T. Goldman.” Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock
MovieWeb’s Matthew Mahler calls it “a mind-melting blend of cringe comedy, character study, and meta documentary.”
Ben Pearson of SlashFilm is not the only critic to call the show “bonkers.” He adds, “Since the rise of streaming, many shows have felt as if they were designed by an algorithm and stretched out with the sole intention of keeping viewers engaged with a platform for as long as possible. Not this one.”
First of all there is the show’s odd format, which combines fiction with sort-of reality, scripted with a behind-the-scenes “making of” docuseries.
“Quirky and odd, the show’s main point feels like the fact we’re all the heroes of our story, at least in our own highly subjective eyes,” Brian Lowry reviews for CNN. “It’s honestly hard to know where to begin in describing the program.”
Initially conceived as a feature, the project was then due to be made for Quibi — Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ill-fated shortform mobile video platform. When it folded, Peacock picked the idea up and made it into a six-part limited series backed by Seth Rogan’s production company.
Filmed on and off for a decade, with much of the filming crammed into 15 days last Summer, Woliner hired documentarian Jason Tippet in 2017 to bring his fly-on-the-wall style.
“He’ll find a spot and plant the camera and walk away and just kind of roll until something interesting happens,” the director explained to SlashFilm. “So we decided early on to make him that third camera, he’s the part of the process. Sometimes he would just roam around the set and basically follow Paul and be far enough away that people didn’t feel like they were on camera. But everyone on set knew that was the deal, that they were mic-ed and we were recording behind the scenes.”
Goldman had written a book, “Duplicity: A True Story of Crime and Deceit,” about the events, along with a screenplay for a film or TV deal that was ignored by everyone except Woliner.
“Every page had mind-blowing things on it,” Woliner tells MovieWeb. “It’s just kind of an amazing peek into this person’s mind and his experience and his perspective, which in many ways was completely different from my own. And then I would find parts of his book that were completely relatable at its core, being about a desire to be loved and lead what you’d consider a normal life.”
PAUL T. GOLDMAN — “Chapter 5: The Chronicles“ Episode 105 — Pictured: Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman — (Photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
Paul T. Goldman as himself and Frank Grillo as Dan Hardwick in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
Melinda McGraw as Audrey Munson in “Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Tyler Golden/Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
“Paul T. Goldman,” directed by Jason Woliner. Cr: Peacock
From the Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman as Paul T. Goldman, photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
Woliner not only decided that he would direct a documentary about his production of Goldman’s story, but that Goldman would write and star in all of it. “It was just like, we are filming his writing, and we’re going to see what it reveals,” he said.
“It really was just this kind of falling in love with his mind and then trying to figure out how to translate that into a series, but in a newer thing that is separate from bad or good.”
A tension, which Woliner was keen to exploit, is about how he as a documentarian (and a director of comedy) is telling the story of Paul telling his story. In his interview with Mahler, he calls the filmmaker the “villain of a documentary,” but admits that the show is ultimately his version.
“It’s me telling the story of him telling his story, but it is all filtered through my own perspective. And at the end of the day, I’m the one controlling the edit and not Paul.”
A documentary filmmaker, he says, is “this person who has descended upon the life of a real person and use their life to explore something, to make a point about the human condition or whatever, but they’re the one with all the power, and there is always an imbalance. I hope Paul is happy with the show. I know if he controlled it fully, it would be a very different show.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Hulu’s new feature documentary examines the rise and fall of a “disruptive” $47 billion unicorn led by hippie-messianic figure Adam Neumann.
January 31, 2023
Posted
January 12, 2023
“Copenhagen Cowboy:” Neon, Neo-Noir, and Nefarious
TL;DR
Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Copenhagen Cowboy” for Netflix is noir-thriller drama and the Danish director’s second television series through a streaming platform.
The superheroes (and villains) are ultra-stylized and neon-saturated, and the pacing is glacial.
Refn wants to maintain his autonomy and independence as a filmmaker, and says the Hollywood system is falling apart desperately.
Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn says that the characters in his new Netflix series, Copenhagen Cowboy, are a “female evolution” of characters from previous projects such as Drive, Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives.
So, that could only mean one thing: stylized ultra-violence.
“I’ve done films in the past with a certain type of character that was first played by Mads Mikkelsen in Valhalla Rising on one hand and then Ryan Gosling played him as a driver in Drive and then Vithaya [Pansringarm] played him as a lieutenant in Only God Forgives,” Refn explained during the Venice Film Festival premiere of the series, as reported by Diana Lodderhose at Deadline.
Copenhagen Cowboy is his take on a superhero show. He continued, “So, I was working with Robert Wade and Neal Purvis, on a larger female evolution of that character and then suddenly one night, I was like, ‘Maybe I should try to do a version of it as female and not just one but many.’ And that was the kind of aspiration to do it.”
Dubbed by critics as a neon-noir or acid western, though described by the Danish filmmaker as “poetic neo-noir,” the series, which launched on January 5, revolves around a young heroine called Miu (Angela Bundalovic) on a search for justice after a lifetime of servitude.
“I think that the [superhero] genre, like fairy tales… it’s a reflection of us as a society and it mirrors our desires and it’s our fantasies and it’s everything that’s really interesting because it’s heightened reality,” Refn noted.
It’s not for everyone.
“[Y]our enjoyment of Copenhagen Cowboy will go as far as you can tolerate Refn’s visual aesthetic,” Sean Price writes in his review for The Spool. “The primary colors that paint the entire frame with a neon glow, the pulsing Cliff Martinez score, and of course, the Miami Vice font.”
But even Price acknowledges the show’s vibe is not without its virtues.
“There may not be substance behind the style, but it goes a long way when your style includes Cliff Martinez,” whose score he says “does most of the emotional heavy lifting” for Copenhagen Cowboy.
The show is shot in Denmark, is produced by his wife Liv Corfixen, and also features his daughters Lola and Lizzielou Corfixen. It’s also a product of the pandemic and streaming’s content creation boom.
Refn told Deadline‘s Crew Call podcast that he pitched the idea to the newly formed Netflix Nordic when he “really didn’t know how the world was going to turn out.” The Netflix Nordic was sold on the idea of a new narrative borne out The Pusher trilogy, and after a five-month stint with an all female writing team, Copenhagen Cowboy was brought to set.
“We had a great crew and, in a way, there is something very easy about working in the Scandinavian model because we are not so many people and I like that kind of smaller components of productions and so forth. It was just very pleasant.”
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn., courtesy of Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn., courtesy of Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
“Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
In an interview with Anthony D’Alessandro for Deadline, Refn was asked if he ever considered making a mainstream superhero project.
“I’ve always cherished my independence,” he replied. “I think waking up in the morning and going to work and paint the way you want it to look and go home, is still the most satisfying experience ever.
“If you don’t have the power of control at the end of the day or the ability to manipulate into your favor, it is committee. You have to spend your entire day struggling to get a compromise across, then what example am I to my own kids?”
He also added that he thought the studio system is not in good shape, commenting, “Hollywood is very seductive and intoxicating, but it’s also a system that’s falling apart desperately,” Refn said. “And I think they’re doing it to themselves more than anything else.”
Making a Netflix Hit and Surviving for Season 2
A cynic might wonder if Refn’s analysis of Hollywood is in some way influenced by studios that are less apt to write him a blank check for a niche production. The Ringer’s Miles Surrey describes his previous lavish budgets as “a blank check that came out of nowhere and wasn’t necessarily earned.”
Surrey writes, “Whether or not Refn moved to the small screen because he was no longer finding any takers for his feature films, his divisive style is an intriguing fit for the stretched-out length of a TV show.”
But Refn’s Netflix Nordic endeavor seems a bit more right-sized to Surrey. He writes, “Copenhagen Cowboy should be more accessible—and presumably far cheaper to produce—than Refn’s grand Amazon experiment” (meaning his 13-hour Too Old to Die Young).
None of these comments mean that Surrey is panning the show, however. “This is as challenging as television can get, and while it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, there’s no denying that Refn is utterly singular in his image making. To appreciate a Refn project like Copenhagen Cowboy is to accept that, sometimes, style wins out over substance.”
But even Netflix and its competitors are getting more ruthless, and it will be interesting to see if the streamer deems the show a success and, therefore, worthy of a second season.
“[T]he way the story leaves off, it’s clear these six chapters have been planned as part of a multi-season arc, should the Netflix gods be feeling generous,” notes The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han.
Collider’s Chase Hutchinson is a fan of the unconventional series, who never the less isn’t holding out a lot of hope for continuing Miu’s storyline: “[T]he series is, to be frank, rather unlikely to find the broadest of audiences which is crucial in a ruthless streaming world ruled increasingly by metrics. Still, no matter what happens in the future, the mere presence of such a show is worth celebrating.”
For Refn’s part, it’s clear he hasn’t gone all-in on a streaming-centric model. He told reporters, “I don’t think theatrical [cinema] will ever go away. I think theatrical will always exist, but it needs to be challenged in order to become better, more sufficient and more meaningful.”
On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train” is an assassin movie with comedy, action, and an existential question at the center of it all.
January 31, 2023
Posted
January 11, 2023
“It’s Like Doing Four Movies in Two Years:” Editing and Post on “Andor”
TL;DR
Disney+ series “Andor” goes back five years from the events of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” following the journey of Rebellion hero Cassian Andor.
Series creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy and his editor brother, John Gilroy, discuss the intensity of the work involved and how naive they were going in.
Editor John Gilroy recounts how the show wasn’t relatable in size to any other medium, film or linear television, describing it as “like doing four movies in two years.”
Currently streaming on Disney+, Andor is a much more substantial series with genuine emotional depth — so it may not appeal to all Star Wars fans.
2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made the mildly devoted Star Wars fan take another look at the universe. Making two seasons of an episodic filling out the prequel story promised more of the same devotion and the vital backstory we wondered about.
The great news is that this is exactly what has happened with Andor. The Playlist’s Rodrigo Perez talks for all of us new devotees, writing, “A much more adult, serious, dirtier, and complicated look at the Star Wars galaxy and what living under an oppressive regime does to its populace; centering on one of its leads, Rebel Alliance Captain and spy Cassian Andor.”
Showrunner and creator Tony Gilroy explains where Andor sits in the Stars Wars timeline. “It rewinds back five years from the events of Rogue One to follow Cassian Andor on his journey to get to the movie. He’s the one person that the whole Rebel Alliance is going to trust with this assignment. So, he’s the tip of the spear. How did he get to be the tip of the spear? How did he get to have all of the skills that are required for that?”
With the advent of streaming, the ability to do a series that could potentially answer those questions by examining the untold story of the formative years of the Rebellion and the personal history of the hero who gave his life for the cause became more of a reality.
“We’ve done 12 episodes for the first season. The 12 episodes that we’ve done cover one year in time. We’re going to do another twelve that are going to take us over the next four years into Rogue One.”
In a series of interviews, Gilroy and his editor brother, John Gilroy, spill on the intensity of the work involved and how naive they were going in, which ironically helped them cope.
“Scripts just have to be dead tight, just dead tight,” Tony said to Maggie Lovitt at Collider. “I was so naive at the very beginning. I don’t know. I mean, when I think back, what I didn’t know when we started is shocking to me. Really, it’s like I said before, it’s like having kids. If you knew what it was going to be, you wouldn’t do it. Once you do it, you’re like, Oh my God.”
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Faye Marsay as Vel Sartha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Matt Lyons as Dewi Pamular and Matt Lyons as Freedi Pamular in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Duncan Pow as Melshi and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
B2EMO in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Arvel Skeen, Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, Gershwyn Eustache Jr. as Taramyn Barcona, and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a shoretrooper in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor with delivery guards Kenny Fullwood and Josh Herdman in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Kyle Soller as Syril Karn and Denise Gough as Supervisor Dedra Meero in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha, Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, and Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a KX-series Droid in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma, and Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
Brother John, who edited four episodes (and was the finisher on the rest), also saw the strength of scripts that were watertight, as he told Sarah Shachat, host of IndieWire’s “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast. “Finding the tempo of the show was really not hard in the cutting room because a lot of it was written and executed so well,” he said.
In fact, there were no scenes that weren’t used in the show. John even joked that there wouldn’t be any DVD extras as there was nothing left to use. “The better the scripts, the less you’re going to have to invent later,” he concluded.
John explained to Iain Blair at Post Perspective how the show wasn’t relatable in size to any other medium, film or linear television. “I’ve been on big movies editing for a year, but this was like doing four movies in two years. It was huge, with a lot more people on the post team and a lot more editors — seven in addition to me. You work the same way as a movie, but you delegate more, and there are a lot of moving parts. You’re always overlapping with one or two or more blocks at a time, so there’s a lot of place-setting,” he said.
“They put a lot of money into this, but not as much as in a big feature, so the way you make up for that is that the TV schedules are longer. All the VFX shots took a very long time, but we had more time to get it all right. It’s the same thing with the sound. The sound crew is smaller, but all the prep is far more spread out.”
During an episode of “The Rogue Ones: A Star Wars Andor Podcast,” John described his work practice and how he cut his episodes together. “For me it’s a feel, it’s instinctual. When I’m cutting a show I’m actually watching it in super slow motion kind of. It’s like watching a glacier move, but it’s moving in my head as I’m building it,” he said.
“It might be one of my superpowers but I can watch something over and over again and I’m really good at keeping my bearings and keeping objective,” he added. “You’ve also got to know when it’s done and not walk past the truth, I think I have a pretty good sense of that. There’s so much work to do but you could mess about with something forever, I’ve seen people do it, believe me.”
Speaking to Shachat on the IndieWire “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast, the brothers discussed the score and how “spotting it,” or cueing the score, was so important.
“We had to learn how to spot differently on this than we had been trained to do making movies. If you spot normally a lot of times you can have a scene, say an eight page scene and you spot it like a movie and you put good music too soon all of a sudden the scene just disappears, it just washes out,” Tony said.
He challenged the music fans to watch how late they spotted. John agreed that the scenes were longer and you didn’t want to run out of gas. “You feel that it’s sometimes better when it’s dry for the first few minutes,” he said.
But less definitive was the process of dealing with so much content that needed editing, and were there options for each shot to deal with as well? “It’s the kind of shooting plan they would have on a big movie. But on a big movie they would have four shooting plans or at least a back-up. They would then shoot the crap out of it,” Tony said.
“Ours is the opposite of that and is very specific,” he continued. “We were always trying to find points of entry to start us off. Like the gloves on the wall in Ferrix, where you would hang them after working a shift. In your imagination that’s where your father or your mother hanged their gloves before you. It was that obsessiveness we were after that slowly built-out their culture.”
The Playlist’s Perez sums up what this gem of a Star Wars episodic means to him, and encourages everyone to watch it, even super-fans. “If Andor is slow to start, it ignites with fury in episodes three and four, paving the way to a show that, so far, feels gripping in its tension and resolve,” he writes in his review.
“It’s debatable if the series will be embraced universally by all Star Wars fans, but if you’ve been disenchanted by most of the Disney-era Lucasfilm projects — or at least craving something more substantive with depth — Andor is likely a provocative one that will light a fire under you, and compel you to sit up and take notice.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Editor Bob Ducsay, ASC on the layers of structure and sleight-of-hand behind writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out: Glass Onion.”
January 11, 2023
“Aftersun:” How Do You Remake Memories?
TL;DR
The emotional weight of the debut feature from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells has been lauded by critics.
Wells discusses how she baked certain visual choices either into her script, when she discovered others on set, or during the edit.
The indie film is produced by Barry Jenkins’ production company Pastel and bears some of the hallmark’s of his Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”
Sight and Sound, the prestigious international film magazine, selected Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun as the best film of 2022.
Inspired by, but not based on, the director’s experiences as the child of young parents, the ‘90s-set film stars newcomer Francesca Corio as Sophie, an 11-year-old girl on a package holiday to Turkey with her father Calum (Paul Mescal).
The film, which also won seven British Indie Film Awards, is described by the magazine as an “exquisitely subtle yet deeply affecting and honest depiction of mental illness, father-daughter love, and memory.”
Developed and produced with the support of the BFI Film Fund, using funds from the National Lottery, Aftersun was one of the most talked about films at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was picked up for international distribution by A24.
IndieWire’s Eric Kohn judged it “the most evocative look at an adolescent gaze coming to terms with the adult world since Moonlight.”
Several critics compare the way Aftersun paints its characters’ interior lives to that of Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Jenkins and his producing partner Adele Romanski served as producers on the film.
The 35-year-old was born and raised in Edinburgh, but moved to the US in 2012 to study film at NYU. There, her standout short films including Laps and Blue Christmas caught the attention of Romanski, who encouraged Wells to develop the script.
“Her short films were pretty fucking brilliant,” Romanski tells Kohn. “I was curious to hear what she was working on and how the storytelling style for her shorts would translate into that longer format. Then we waited patiently for years.”
That was in 2018. Wells finally retreated into a two-week writing frenzy in 2019, but held onto her first draft for another half a year before sending it to Romanski. “I spent six months pretending to rewrite but in actual fact just spellchecking it over and over again,” she said.
Her film is very much about memory — how certain moments stay with us forever, but also how our interpretation of events can differ from what actually happened. The story’s “beautiful elusiveness — its accumulation of seemingly inconsequential fragments that gradually accrue in emotional power,” per Tom Grierson in the Los Angeles Times, makes it a difficult movie to encapsulate, even for its maker.
Deadline’s Damon Wise isn’t the only interviewer to observe Wells appearing “somewhat shell-shocked by her film’s progress in the world,” adding “I’m actually a little in awe of the fact that this film has — and could — reach so many people.”
That’s perhaps because, as she tells Marshall Shaffer at Slant Magazine, “Mental health struggles are messy, symptoms overlap and diagnoses are often [incorrect]. It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint many mental illnesses.”
Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Frankie Corio as Sophie in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
Of the film’s deliberate ambiguity Wells says to Alex Denney of AnotherMag, “I think inherent in whatever style it is that I have there is space for people to bring their own experiences. It’s both conscious and not: I think when you avoid a certain kind of exposition it does create ambiguity and people will fill that ambiguity with their own experiences, their own reference points that they enter the cinema with.”
Withholding information “is kind of the point of the film” she tells IndieWire. “I think the ambiguity is inherent in the subtlety and my aversion to exposition. But for me, the answers are all in the film.”
Her reticence to talk in concrete terms about her work is also warning not to label it an autobiography. “It’s very much fiction, but rooted in experience and memory,” she reveals to Denney. “It’s personal in that the feeling is mine and I allowed my own memories and anecdotes through all of childhood to form the kind of skeleton outline [of the first draft]. But after that point it did become very much about the story I was trying to tell, and that frequently required pushing it away from my own experience.”
Cinematographer Gregory Oke records on lush 35mm and partly masks Calum’s appearance throughout the film, rendering him as a semi-ghostly presence.
“We worked hard to keep Calum at arm’s length, to keep more physical distance between him and the camera in order to create the feeling that he is in some sense unknowable,” Wells tells Denney.
Interspersed throughout the narrative is a jarring dreamlike rave sequence, which finds the adult Sophie confronting her father under strobe lights on the crowded dancefloor.
“In a lot of ways, there was a mystery to the process of discovering exactly what this was,” Wells explains to IndieWire. “So much of the process found its way into the film. The process of rooting through the past and memories and allowing some to rise to the surface, transforming them or reframing them.”
Noting Aftersun’s impressionistic style, Deadline’s Wise wonders whether Wells achieved that by taking things away in the edit, or scripting it.
“Both,” is her reply. “I didn’t shoot anything I didn’t want to be in the film. But there is plenty that isn’t in the final cut, that was lost in service of the edit. There were discoveries in the edit that were originally just strategies that we used to solve problems but which ended up being quite a meaningful strategy in terms of creating a sense of memory.”
The way Aftersun deceptively drifts from scene to scene — punctuated by meditative cutaways of shots like a person’s hand or a random passerby yelling at their child kid — are all painstakingly crafted.
“Some of [those shots] were whole scenes reduced to an image,” Wells tells IndieWire’s Kohn. “Some were details in the script, and some were discovered on set based on months, if not years, of conversations with my cinematographer.”
When it’s suggested the deft execution of Aftersun feels like a magic trick, she demurs. “I don’t have an answer as to what it is,” she says. “We didn’t set out to pull off an emotional heist.”
Writer/director Mike Mills discusses the making of his black-and-white comedy-drama starring Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman.
January 9, 2023
Putting Together the Post Puzzle of “Glass Onion”
TL;DR
Film editor Bob Ducsay, ASC, discusses the layers of structure and sleight-of-hand behind “Knives Out: Glass Onion.”
Beginning with 2012’s “Looper,” writer-director Rian Johnson has collaborated with Ducsay for more than a decade.
To help avoid reshoots during post, Ducsay was embedded with the production team while shooting on location in Greece.
People who seek to explain how to make successful whodunit movies usually compare them to a careful construction of something — a recipe, perhaps, or a puzzle. Writer-director Rian Johnson of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery expertly spins those plates of cast, suspense, plot, comedy and drama, but has a secret weapon in his movie-building: his film editor of more than a decade, Bob Ducsay.
Ever since taking on editing Johnson’s Looperin 2012, Ducsay has brought his guile and organizational prowess to the partnership, and they were never needed more than for the growing Knives Out series of movies.
Leslie Combemale at the Motion Picture Association’s The Credits has it right when describing Ducsay’s vital part in the success of the franchise, “It is Ducsay, working in partnership with Johnson, who must maintain the story’s nuance and attention to character to preserve the very finely calibrated balance required by a whodunit.”
In fact, having Ducsay at his side from the beginning was crucial for The Last Jedi, Johnson tells Variety’s Jazz Tangcay.
“Editing a movie of that size and scope in terms of the VFX work, the post-production process is so much more exponentially complicated. It really becomes a different thing.” Yet despite the grand scale of the film, the characters and stories still needed to work.
Ducsay himself celebrates the successful partnership, “I think one of the most important things, and I don’t wanna say learned, but appreciated about Rian, is how in the construction of the edit, he places such a high emphasis on simplicity. I’ve always thought that was just generally a good goal. Why do you cut? What is it that you’re trying to do by, in a 24th of a second, switching what the audience is seeing?”
The new movie, Glass Onion, is another tribute, just short of an homage, to Agatha Christie’s books. Especially in the way she would introduce a new book by ignoring what came before. Johnson told a press conference that her story-washing was the way he was able to continue his interpretation of the genre. “The mode in which we were thinking to keep making them was always not to continue the story of the first one, but to treat them the way Agatha Christie treated her books and to do an entirely new mystery every time, a new location, new rogues gallery of characters,” he said.
“It’s not just a change of whodunit. She was mixing genres. She was throwing crazy narrative spins that had never been done in whodunits before. She was really keeping the audience on their toes. Every single book had a whole new reason for being. So, sitting down to write this one, that was kinda the marching orders.”
Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay, Jessica Henwick as Peg, Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, Dave Bautista as Duke Cody, Edward Norton as Miles Bron, and Madelyn Cline as Whiskey in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Edward Norton as Miles Bron and Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022) Kate Hudson as Birdie, LeslieKate Hudson as Birdie Jay, Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint, and Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: NetflixOdom Jr. as Lionel and Kathryn Hahn as Claire. Cr: Courtesy NETFLIX
Edward Norton as Miles Bron in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay, Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint, Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella, Edward Norton as Miles Bron, Jessica Henwick as Peg, Madelyn Cline as Whiskey and Dave Bautista as Duke Cody in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: Netflix
Jessica Henwick as Peg, Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay, and Janelle Monáe as Andi Brand in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc and Janelle Monáe as Andi Brand in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Edward Norton as Miles Bron, Madelyn Cline as Whiskey, Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella, Dave Bautista as Duke Cody, Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint, Jessica Henwick as Peg, Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay, Janelle Monáe as Andi Brand, and Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Janelle Monáe as Andi Brand, and Madelyn Cline as Whiskey in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
Edward Norton as Miles Bron, and Dave Bautista as Duke Cody in writer/director Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” Cr: John Wilson/Netflix
However, there’s a particular challenge in presenting a sequel even if it’s based on a clean-slate story. Ducsay explained the challenge to Glenn Garland on the Editors on Editing podcast.
“When it’s a sequel it’s especially difficult because people will think, is it as good as, better or worse than the first movie. To me that was asking a lot and I really felt it. You want to bring the same level of delight to the audience that you gave them in the first movie,” he said.
“We wanted to be really honest with the audience to the point of if you watched it a second time you would notice so much in plain sight that you didn’t see the first time. So that’s the trick, you need to know where the audience was looking at a particular time, what was the audience thinking as well.”
Ducsay used friends and filmmaking colleagues to give him feedback on how his edit was working by throwing preview parties. “So not your typical audience. But they can help identify things that they think will be an issue and also pitch suggestions of how you might fix something.”
The editor expanded on the idea of placing clues in plain sight in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Carolyn Giardina.
“It was important to us to make sure that the audience didn’t feel cheated,” he said, repeating the idea that the filmmakers wanted to be “as honest as we could be with the audience. We wanted to leave as many things in plain sight as possible without tipping our hand too much. And that really is a tremendous challenge. You really have to understand where people [in the audience] are looking [and] what they are thinking about. And if you know these things or if you have a really good idea of these things, it becomes easier to understand just what you can give away and what you have to withhold. We started getting bolder as we went on, because we were getting away with a lot of things. And when I say ‘getting away,’ it’s not trying to dupe the audience — it’s just putting the information out there and having a good idea that they can’t see it.”
Cinema is particularly good at playing with time. You just assume you’re in the present when you’re watching something but it could be in another time period, which sometimes creates complications in the edit. “With Glass Onion we had a couple of things that we had to finesse because it was causing confusion not for a huge portion of the audience but enough that it concerned us. Then you have to understand what it is that’s causing them to not be where you want them to be at this moment.”
These complexities needed unpicking on a daily basis during the Glass Onion shoot in Greece, one of the reasons Ducsay was embedded with the production, as he explained to Matt Feury on The Rough Cut podcast. “Essential for Rian is that the editor be on location but it means you have to work at great speed and be thorough; which is hard to do,” he said.
“But we put a particular focus on guidance while the movie is being photographed so he can come in and see how things are progressing. Are we missing any coverage or is there some story point that maybe felt strong on the page but is a little bit more diffused when it’s been photographed. The goal is to come out of the shoot with little or no additional photography needed.” Interestingly, both Glass Onion and Knives Out didn’t have any additional photography.
“All these actors are giving you wonderful things, but sometimes it’s too big, sometimes it’s too small. So we might realize we really need to change a take, so we need to find something that is less of a thing, something that’s smaller, or sometimes it’s just taking it out because it’s the line that does the damage, not the way it was performed. It’s the greatest fun of a film like this when you have a big ensemble cast of great actors across the board. Every single one of them just gives a brilliant performance, but I get to go in there and tune things.”
Ducsay concluded on this chapter of time in the Rian Johnson universe, “Ensemble movies are much more challenging from a character standpoint, you have to keep a lot of balls in the air. You want to get this meal just perfect, all the right flavors and spices and everything just at the right level and it has become over the year my favorite thing about editing as I love actors and I love what they bring as in the detail of character.”
Speaking with Ducsay in Deadline’s video series The Process, Johnson revealed that learning how to collaborate with an editor wasn’t something that necessarily come easily to him.
“Johnson famously began making films on tape at a young age, editing them in-camera, and later went on to cut his feature directorial debut, Brick, as well,” Deadline film reporter Matt Grobar notes. “He admits in his chat with Ducsay that he was frustrated as he pressed on in his career by the notion of having to cede control of the editing process to someone else, after having for so many years had his own hands on the material.”
The writer-director described the initial awkwardness he felt about the process as “like playing the piano by telling somebody what keys to press.”
One solution Johnson landed on was to build “elaborate” LEGO structures in order to distract himself from interfering. “If I don’t keep my hands busy, I will go insane while we’re editing,” he said.
“Once I learned the collaborative nature of it and how to work with you, as opposed to through you, it became something where it was additive… just like my relationship with Steve [Yedlin], who’s my cinematographer, or any of the other HODs,” Johnson told Ducsay. “It becomes something where the added voice, the added perspective, the time it takes to talk through it was something that added to the finished product, as opposed to being an obstruction.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Following interactive specials like “Bandersnatch,” Netflix is continuing to push the boundaries of storytelling with its new non-linear heist series, “Kaleidoscope.”
Launching New Year’s Day, the eight-episode anthology series is loosely inspired by the real-life story where $70 billion in bonds went missing in downtown Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy.
Viewers can watch the color-coded episodes in any order they choose, ending with the epic “White: The Heist” story finale.
Netflix is continuing to push the boundaries of storytelling with a new non-linear heist series, Kaleidoscope. Stretching across eight episodes, the anthology series spans 25 years, following a crew of masterful thieves and their attempt to crack a seemingly unbreakable vault for the biggest payday in history. Guarded by the world’s most powerful corporate security team, and with law enforcement on the case, every episode reveals a piece of an elaborate puzzle of corruption, greed, vengeance, scheming, loyalties and betrayals. How did the crew of thieves plan it? Who gets away with it? Who can be trusted?
“Netflix has never been shy about putting experimental TV on its platform, as seen with interactive specials like Bandersnatch,” Wilson Chapman notes at IndieWire. “Now, the streamer is playing with the medium’s episodic format with Kaleidoscope, a new anthology series set to premiere New Year’s Day.”
7 jobs to pull off a $70 billion heist 25 years in the making.
KALEIDOSCOPE, an innovative new limited series that can be watched in any order to tell the complete story, hits Netflix on New Year's Day. pic.twitter.com/XkKQLKlod6
Kaleidoscope (formerly known as Jigsaw) is loosely inspired by the real-life story where $70 billion in bonds went missing in downtown Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy.
The ensemble cast features Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) as Leo Pap, the leader of the heist crew, which is rounded out by Paz Vega (The OA), Rosaline Elbay (Ramy), Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad), Peter Mark Kendall (The Americans), and Jordan Mendoza (Ziwe). Taking on the role of series antagonist, Rufus Sewell (Old) plays Roger Salas, a former thief and corporate security worker who leads his own team comprising Tati Gabrielle (You), Soojeong Son (Servant), and Hemky Madera (Spider Man: Homecoming). Niousha Noor (Here and Now) and Bubba Weiler (Dopesick) play FBI agents Nazan Abassi and Samuel Toby, who are assigned to investigate the ring of thieves.
Jordan Mendoza as RJ, Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis, Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin, Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin and Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Jordan Mendoza as RJ in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Niousha Noor as Nazan Abassi and Bubba Weiler as Toby in episode “Pink” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis, Paz Vega as Ava Mercer, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “Green” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Paz Vega as Ava Mercer in episode “Orange” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Rufus Sewell as Roger Salas and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Red” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap and Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Episode “Yellow” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Peter Mark Kendall as Stan Loomis, Paz Vega as Ava Mercer, Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin and Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode “Blue” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Tati Gabrielle as Hannah Kim in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Niousha Noor as Nazan Abassi anbd Bubba Weiler as Toby in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: Netflix
Paz Vega as Ava Mercer and Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of “Kaleidoscope.” Cr: David Scott Holloway/Netflix
The compelling crime anthology series takes a non-linear approach to storytelling, building intrigue and suspense across seven standalone episodes — color-coded “Yellow,” “Green,” “Blue,” “Violet,” “Orange,” “Red” and “Pink” — leading up to the epic “White: The Heist” story finale. The series offers different immersive viewing experiences depending upon the order in which the episodes are seen.
“The format is also a good way to put a twist on a story we’ve seen a million times; bank heist movies and series frequently follow a set of tropes that include recruiting members, mapping out the heist in extreme detail, and people double-crossing each other,” Erick Massoto writes at Collider. “This was the theme of one of Netflix’s most popular series: Spanish-language thriller Money Heist, which has spawned a spin-off and a Korean remake. In Kaleidoscope, the difference is that the bank robbery takes place during a storm, and its non-linear format is certainly what will set the series apart.”
All viewers will eventually see all eight episodes, but the order in which they watch the episodes will affect their viewpoint on the story, the characters, and the questions and answers at the heart of the heist.
How will you experience the colors of Kaleidoscope?
Steven Soderbergh’s “bottle film” is a surveillance thriller for an age when everyone knows they’re constantly being spied upon.
January 31, 2023
Posted
December 27, 2022
“The English:” It’s a Classic Western, Just Made With Today’s Technology
TL;DR
Cinematographer Arnau Valls Colomer created a co-production episodic Spaghetti Western, filmed in Spain in the Castilla-La Mancha region and the Castile and León region.
The English is classified as a Spaghetti Western while paying homage to the classic Western style.
Valls Colomer shared how he would pull references and think about how the original cinematographers of this genre would film the scenes.
Co-produced by the BBC and Amazon Prime Video, The English is an episodic about the multinational land grabs in the American midwest just before the turn of the 20th century. NAB Amplify spoke with Arnau Valls Colomer, the sole cinematographer for all six episodes.
When Valls Colomer read the script for The English, he was tempted for a second to pursue a new way of shooting Westerns: a reinvention. But the production veered away from reinvention to more of an homage. Valls Colomer explained the thinking: “We were tempted to reinvent but decided to make an homage to the classic imagery of the Western but to do it in a modern and contemporary way. We’re shooting digital but didn’t want to create an old or vintage look, it needed to be cleverer than that.”
The show would be shot in Spain, but not in the searing heat of the Almerían deserts where many Spaghetti Westerns (like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) were shot. They needed areas that would more resemble the journey Emily Blunt’s character makes; from New Orleans to Nebraska.
Castilla-La Mancha is a region in central Spain southeast of Madrid, and further north is Castile and León, which has the high plateaus ringed by mountains. Both would make believable stand-ins for the wide-open spaces of Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas.
Adding in some clever framing, beautiful silhouettes, and a few digital set-extended mountains would complete the disguise.
But also essential to the look of The English was the way it was shot to tell the story and live with the challenging shoot schedule. They decided to use a static camera, partly due to the use of heavy Panavision anamorphic lenses and accessory-laden Sony cameras, which were hard to move quickly, but also to create an observing aesthetic that was witnessing the action and not following or chasing it.
“The style was composed and quiet but with lots of angles, we had three cameras running at the same time. But it doesn’t look like a three-camera show because the shots are so static. The style becomes the language of the shoot suiting the dialog scenes particularly as they’re elevated with that lack of movement,” Valls Colomer says.
“We realized how good the static style was for us and pushed it even more finding it a very effective way of shooting six hours in 90 days.”
But he also wanted the Technicolor look. “The lighting should also be an homage to the classic Western so we played with the Technicolor blue of the sky and tried to find the right skin tone that looked orangey like the Westerns but not too much so the audience would understand it was a modern image.” Valls Colomer found a similar simplicity in the color grade, trying not to use some of the techniques like masking that weren’t around a few decades ago.
But if you wanted the iconography of the Hollywood Spaghetti Westerns, it’s all there, generally romanticized but beautifully done; your television has never looked so gorgeous. “The Western is purely cinematic anyway and doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s fairytale really so you can do whatever you want,” Valls Colomer commented, referring to the freedom he had to shoot from director Hugo Blick.
This included shooting night scenes under the stars using day-for-night shots composited against studio-controlled action scenes for the actors. “There were a couple of scenes where the two leads are talking underneath the stars with just a candle next to them. As a cinematographer when you read these scenes you wonder how you are going to make them believable with a magic quality to them.
“I actually imagined what the original cinematographers would do back in the day of the Westerns. They would build an enormous set and paint the background with beautiful stars. But I wanted to see that with the enormous landscape lit by the stars, so how do I do it without having a backdrop?” Valls Colomer said.
“We also wanted that feeling of infinity where you would see the landscape extends so much. So we built a set and put a blue screen on it. We then shot the backgrounds with day for night effects, but the actors were in the studio where I could control the light.
“This was the basis of our approach and led our thinking; as in how did the cinematographers of the day achieve the shots and what would be the new version of that with the latest technology?”
Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp and Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp and Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp and Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Amazon Studios
“The English.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp in “The English.” Cr: Diego Lopez Calvin/Amazon Studios
As most drama-driven episodic are now produced, The English was shot like a movie. A 90-day shoot in Spain extending from late spring 2021 through the end of the summer also included a COVID break. But Valls Colomer explains that the Spanish seasons dictated the shooting schedule. “Late spring and early summer work very well in Spain for the exteriors, and then when August arrives we mainly shoot interiors because of the harsh and high light.”
But the Spanish magic hour is about 8:30 PM for master shots, which considerably changed their film schedule. “Normally what you do on films is you start on a wide shot and then do the close-ups. Here we did it the other way around, during the day we’d do the close-ups with dialog scenes where we would light them and then knowing that the end of the day would be an amazing for wide shots, we’d do that.”
Shooting anamorphic for television is no longer forbidden, and in fact different broadcasters or streamers indulge in aspect ratio tricks to find a hook to keep their audiences interested. But for the way Valls Colomer shot The English, his use of embedded grain proved a sticking point for the BBC and their online service, iPlayer.
“They did fight against the grain as I was applying a texture which uses grain according to the exposure,” he said. “It’s not like one layer but it reacts to the light, I use it on every film. The BBC wasn’t sure about it but I explained the process and they were fine with it.”
Shooting with Panavision vintage anamorphic Primo lenses harkened back to older Westerns, but Valls Colomer mixed them with smaller and lighter C-series anamorphics. As the shoot was static, they could use these big lenses without moving them too much. But they also had some special features. “They had the bokeh and the flares and are very well built so they don’t distort that much,” the DP said.
“I was shooting in a very old-fashioned way, putting in a lot of light and making the lens perform, shooting in a way as if I was working on negative in the 1950s. So, a good T-stop and not wide open, a very old-fashioned style.”
The lenses also had breathing effects that changed the shape of the bokeh depending on where the focus was. “It moves the background bokeh with those old lenses and we used it a lot for gun close-ups and things like that.”
The cameras were all Sony VENICE using the Super 35mm sensor option at 4K, which Valls Colomer found as the perfect foil to the vintage glass. “I did some tests and it works very well with these old lenses to have a very sharp sensor. We found a sweet spot with both technologies,” he said.
“Even now I would shoot the same way and I know there are new cameras out like the ARRI. The combination works well for me.”
Valls Colomer received great plaudits for his work on The English, not just from his contemporaries but also film fans who loved what he’d done. It has certainly raised his profile, and he recently shot a Penelope Cruz movie, En Los Margénes (On the Fringe), and the secretive Apartment 7A, a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby with Ozark breakout star Julia Garner.
AMC’s “Dark Winds,” executive produced by Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin, is part of a mini-boom of Native American content.
January 13, 2023
Posted
December 23, 2022
How the Horror in “Nanny” is Surreal and Real
TL;DR
The first horror film to win the award, Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny” won the 2022 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
“Nanny” is a social critique and a tale of displacement, following an undocumented immigrant’s quest to realize the American Dream.
The film was shot by director of photography Rina Yang, BSC using the Sony VENICE digital camera equipped with a mix of Panavision Ultra Panatar anamorphic and H-series spherical lenses.
In Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature Nanny, the horror is systemic. Crossing genres, the psychological horror movie is a social critique and a tale of displacement, following Aisha (Anna Diop), a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal and is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple, Amy and Adam (played by Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector), living in New York City. In a story that has become all-too familiar in reality, Aisha is also a mother haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind. She’s seeking her own version of the American Dream, one in which she earns enough money at her new job to bring her son to the US, but Aisha becomes increasingly unsettled by the volatility of her employers as well as a violent presence that invades both her dreams and waking life.
The first horror film to win the award, Nanny won this year’s Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, with Jusu becoming the second Black woman director to be recognized. The writer-director’s short vampire film, Suicide by Sunlight, also debuted at Sundance in 2019.
“Nanny offers plenty of examples of those who don’t survive, and you could call it a highly aestheticized yet painfully close-up portrayal of what someone might need to endure, to feint and dodge her way through, in order to have a shot at doing so,” Lidija Haas writes in her review for The New Republic. “For most of the film, we don’t know whether Aisha may harm or even kill the small, blond child — stakes older than the movies themselves — and one of the most tense aspects of not knowing is our keenly calibrated sense of what it will cost Aisha if she does.”
“While recent films in the Black horror genre have presented the terrifying realities of being Black in America, Nanny is rooted in the specific experience of the African diaspora,” Pilar Galvan notes in her review for NPR. “Black horror films often subvert systems of oppression but they also often employ Western devices and narratives. In films like Master, Get Out and Candyman, the horror device is the predominantly white institution or neighborhood — which has implications on the Black character’s sense of self and being. In Nanny, the white domestic space is the setting, but the tensions are manifested through African folklore.”
Nanny was shot on the Sony VENICE by director of photography Rina Yang, BSC, the first Asian woman to be accepted into the British Society of Cinematographers, and also the first female DP to win a cinematography award at the British Arrows. In addition to shooting episodes of HBO’s Euphoria and Top Boy for Netflix, Yang also shot the BAFTA-winning Sitting in Limbo for the BBC and Taylor Swift’s VMA-winning music video, “All Too Well.”
Yang created two separate looks for Nanny, employing soft lighting and handheld camera work for the interior of Aisha’s apartment, while her employer Amy’s posh condo was shot with harder, more modern lighting and a static camera.
“There are many components that contribute to creating Nanny’s tone and texture,” Yang comments in the film’s production notes. “I lit the film’s two worlds with a stylistic dichotomy in mind, with Amy’s world lit by LEDs and other modern sources to imbue its clinical and linear feel, while the camera language is more composed and static. Aisha’s world was shot more handheld and intimate, lit mostly by tungstens and some fluorescents to make it feel warm, cozy, and comfortable.”
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop as Aisha and Michelle Monaghan as Amy in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Anna Diop stars as Aisha in Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature “Nanny.” Cr: Amazon Prime Video
Amy’s world, as Yang related in an interview with Max Weinstein for American Cinematographer, was shot with Panavision Ultra Panatar anamorphic lenses, while “Aisha’s world” was shot with Panavision H-series sphericals.
“We wanted to subtly heighten the visuals when Aisha is in Amy’s world,” Yang explained to Weinstein. “Ultra Panatars are only x1.3 anamorphic, so that’s a very subtle effect. The focus fall-off and the flare felt like the right choice for that world. And I wanted Aisha’s everyday life to have a more grounded and spontaneous feel, which was brought out by the H-series and a more handheld approach.”
Aisha’s nightmares are haunted by visions of the Mami Wata, a malevolent mermaid from African folklore. In one nightmare sequence, Aisha hears the creature’s cries coming from outside the guest room door and looks up in terror as a deluge of water pours down from the ceiling and the room begins to flood.
Yang’s approach to shooting the scene was “quite lo-fi,” she told Weinstein, because “we couldn’t afford a Hydrocrane or fancy underwater kit.” The small crew, which included key grip Stratton Bailey and gaffer Andrew Hubbard, “didn’t use a [standard] telescopic crane because the camera had to move through the water [coming from the ceiling],” she said. “So, it really was as simple as putting an arm on our dolly and then our SFX team, which built pipes into the ceiling, poured water on Anna while the camera was in a splash bag.”
This approach was inspired by one of Yang’s favorite shots from Steve McQueen’s Hunger. “I remembered watching Hunger and really liking this one shot,” she relates to Weinstein. “Then, when I went to this master class with its cinematographer, Sean Bobbitt, he explained how he had filmed a top shot over a bed, in which the main character — Bobby, played by Michael Fassbender — was dying. The shot was really wobbly because he had an awful crane grip, so he thought it would be unusable. But McQueen loved its shakiness, which served the scene’s emotional impact,” she said.
“When I knew that we wouldn’t be using a stabilized head and that I’d be shooting on a long zoom, moving through water, I was worried at first. But then I thought that maybe this shot would have a similar emotional impact as that shot from Hunger. And I think it did.”
Underwater sequences for Nanny, including a horrifying scene where Mami Wata drags Aisha into the depths of a murky pool, were shot by Ian S. Takahashi, who trained under Academy Award-winning cinematographer John Toll, ASC (Braveheart, Legends of the Fall) and was mentored by acclaimed underwater cinematographer Mike Thomas (Thin Red Line, Cast Away). A prolific underwater DP with a lengthy list of commercial and music video credits, Takahashi’s feature film work includes The Suicide Squad and Lost City.
“Any underwater shots take a long time to get just right,” Yang said to Weinstein, “but we had to do it on an indie schedule with only had a few long takes.”
Jusu’s influences for Nanny included writers such as Saidiya Hartman, Zora Neale Hurston and Nikki Giovanni and filmmakers Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, as well as visual artists like Boscoe Holder and Roy Decarava.
“I tried to not just be influenced by the medium that I’m working in, because I find that it just makes your work feel like an homage to other filmmakers, as opposed to a new thing altogether. I think if you’re being honest, as an artist, as a filmmaker, especially with yourself and the material, whatever style you choose will be timeless,” she said in the film’s production notes.
“Most of my horror influences are slow-burn international films: Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, Takashi Miike’s Audition, Kim Jee Woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters… these are a handful of films that inform my horror sensibilities which aren’t necessarily always so formulaic with jump scares every x minutes and easily categorized as ‘traditional American horror.’ ”
But it was Jusu’s mother who ultimately provided the inspiration for the film. “My [mother] is the springboard of everything, she’s the springboard of this idea,” Jusu said in her director’s statement. “She did a lot of domestic work growing up, but she is a brilliant woman who had goals and dreams of her own that she had to sacrifice for the ‘American Dream.’ The entry point [to the American Dream] for a lot of Black and Brown immigrant women and Black American women is domestic labor.”
Jusu elaborated on this theme during a panel discussion for Deadline’s “Contenders Film: Los Angeles” series. “When you’re this close to the material, you can lose your mind,” she said. “It took eight-ish years for a reason. I started and stopped, I doubted myself. I thought the story was too singular, too specific. It’s a very personal story, there are pieces of my mother’s story. I’m Sierra Leonian American, and I watched my mother do jobs that were beneath her, and part of that was domestic work. I was always worried about how she was being treated in these households as a very fiercely protective child of my mother, that was the springboard,” she continued.
“But I knew I didn’t want to tell a straightforward drama about a Black woman who’s doing this domestic work,” she added. “I knew I wanted elements of horror. The darker genres allow you to tell the truth in a way that is really titillating and interesting and pulls the audience in a way that doesn’t feel preachy or pedantic.”
Jusu, a graduate of NYU film school, attributes much of her confidence as a filmmaker to having learned how to edit as well as write and direct. Yes centering Aisha as the main character was a task that continued long after principal photography, she said in the film’s production notes.
“I’ve had to navigate making sure that we linger in Aisha’s POV heavily in post-production,” she said. “It’s just so ingrained in this industry to center on whiteness, that even when you have a Black woman filmmaker who has written the Black woman protagonist, there are certain stages of this process where you have to remind everyone that this is the main character, and we are seeing the world through her eyes,” she continued. “It can be exhausting.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
The first #1 film by a Black woman, “Candyman” is just the beginning for DaCosta, who is now working on “The Marvels” for Marvel Studios.
January 4, 2023
Posted
December 20, 2022
It’s Just the End of the World: Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise”
TL;DR
Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel “White Noise” is a period piece set in the 1980s, a treatise on the media’s role in moral equivalence, and a spectacular disaster movie.
Baumbach rediscovered DeLillo’s cult classic during the height of the pandemic and was struck not just by the topicality, 35 years later, but also the strangeness of the author’s tone.
The film was financed with a $100 million budget by Netflix and shot on 35mm film.
Stuck at home in an emptied-out New York City during the pandemic, filmmaker Noah Baumbach and life partner actress Greta Gerwig cast around for something different to the naturalistic indie films with which he made his name.
“It was either, we were going to do something in the apartment or a Spielbergian apocalypse movie,” Baumbach told Sean Piccoli at Deadline.
Baumbach picked up a novel that he’d read once before as a teenager and which spoke of a different apocalyptic tragedy.
“It had a big effect on me at the time,” Baumbach told NPR’s Steven Inskeep. “I kept stopping and reading it aloud to Greta or to anybody who would listen and just saying, I can’t believe how much this book speaks really to all time… then it coincided with the pandemic. And that’s really when I thought, well, maybe I’ll try to see if there’s a movie here.”
White Noise is his adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, which centers on professor Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), wife Babette (Gerwig), and their precocious children as they confront physical and metaphorical crises.
We learn from a New York Magazine profile by Jon Mooallem that everything that Baumbach loved about the novel — the headiness of its language the density of its ideas, the archness and unreality of its world — had given White Noise a reputation in Hollywood as unadaptable. But to Baumbach, the core of the book always felt vivid and real.
With its $100 million budget, this is the most ambitious project to date for Baumbach, whose breakout film was The Squid and the Whale (2005) and whose last film was the critically acclaimed Marriage Story (2019).
Some of that money is evident on the screen, from an explosive train crash to a car chase through the woods, “and the scariest CGI cloud this side of Nope,” writes IndieWire’s Eric Kohn.
Like Jordan Peele’s blockbuster, White Noise echoes the spectacle of Spielberg and in particular Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Cerebral and escapist, it’s unlike anything the filmmaker has made before. “That was exciting for me,” Baumbach told Kohn. “I think of this movie as floating somewhere above reality. It’s close but not entirely with its feet on the ground.”
It is also a satiric look at the way academia reduces all culture to cold analysis, something that Kohn believes has modern resonance.
“We all go through this with the internet,” Baumbach said. “I’ve watched YouTube a lot. You can see all these different things of totally different value. You can look at the horrors of the world or old commercials, and it all suddenly takes on some kind of equal value when you’re looking at it that way. Bo Burnham even sings about it.”
An example of the banality of modern discourse: In the film two teachers compete over whether Hitler or Elvis serves as a more involving object of study. “You’re teaching Elvis, you’re teaching Hitler, you lecture on their relationships with their mothers, and they become of sort of equal value for the moment when of course they’re not,” Baumbach said. “Everything gets leveled out in our culture.”
Greta Gerwig as Babette, Dean Moore/Henry Moore as Wilder, Adam Driver as Jack, Raffey Cassidy as Denise, May Nivola as Steffie and Sam Nivola as Heinrich in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Adam Driver as Jack and Greta Gerwig as Babette in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Don Cheadle as Murray Siskind and Adam Driver as Jack in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Greta Gerwig as Babette, May Nivola as Steffie, Adam Driver as Jack, Samuel Nivola as Heinrich and Raffey Cassidy as Denise in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Adam Driver as Jack in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Sam Nivola as Heinrich, Adam Driver as Jack, May Nivola as Steffie, Greta Gerwig as Babette, Dean Moore/Henry Moore as Wilder, and Raffey Cassidy as Denise in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Adam Driver as Jack, Greta Gerwig as Babette and Don Cheadle as Murray Siskind in “White Noise,” directed by Noah Baumbach. Cr: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Vadim Rizov at Filmmaker Magazine reckons these central themes — ”about media oversaturation in American life and the weird effects it has on people’s brains — have aged remarkably well; while the novel ties them specifically to terrestrial TV, the basic idea’s hardly changed. We’re all trapped in the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, forever.
The film’s centerpiece is a vast, elaborately mounted sequence in which the couple flee an “Airborne Toxic Event,” the result of a tanker crash.
“Stepping far outside his typically restrained visual style, Baumbach lays on a spectacular comic microcosm of a disaster movie, as crowds flee, jam the highways, and hustle ruthlessly for space,” says Film Comment critic Jonathan Romney, who also suggests the scene becomes a “farcical family adventure, a sort of National Lampoon’s American Apocalypse.”
Baumbach also had British cinematographer Lol Crawley (The OA) shoot the movie on 35mm anamorphic film (with some VistaVision handled by the second unit), which isn’t exactly the most cost-effective approach. This choice raised the question of how Netflix signed off on it, which the director addressed during a Q&A at Film at Lincoln Center.
“It was kind of established very early on,” Crawley said of the format. “My recollection is that Netflix had got behind the idea of it being shot on film before I was even in the mix. And combining film with anamorphic seemed to do the heavy lifting of the aesthetic. It’s like, you combine Jess Gonchor’s fantastic set design and shoot it anamorphic, on film, and you’re like: okay, that’s in the ballpark”
Interviewed by director Wes Anderson for Netflix Queue, Baumbach explains how he worked again with choreographer David Neumann, whom he previously teamed with for Marriage Story.
“It’s like blocking, but the movement and the dialogue work in concert. In the beginning of the film, it’s more in control,” the director said. “There are these rituals we have; the morning ritual, the shopping ritual, the work ritual, the bedtime ritual.
“Then, in the third part, it’s how they start to fracture once we become more aware of what these rituals are invented to disguise. The camera starts to break free in ways as well. By the end, it’s been freed entirely so that it can become something totally abstract.”
Baumbach also discusses his collaboration with Danny Elfman at the 60th edition of the New York Film Festival, commenting that he thought the composer could unify the film’s genre-shifting.
“My fantasy of Danny Elfman was that the death aspect of the movie would appeal to him. And it did, very much. But he also did a lot of electronic music with orchestral music. We were also talking about Aaron Copland and the Americana of it. So it was sort of this Aaron Copland-meets-Tangerine Dream idea that ended up in the movie.”
Baumbach, says Romney, “replaces the novel’s philosophical cool with a more demonstrative, sitcom-style irony — a kind of meta-goofiness.”
Rizov found White Noise “a formidable display of how to spend lots of money,” describing sequences “with their seemingly hundreds of cars and similar numbers of non-CG humans,” but “what Baumbach doesn’t have is Spielberg’s impossible smoothness.”
New York Times critic AO Scott wasn’t entirely convinced either.
“Baumbach, working on a larger scale than he has before, pulls off a few fine cinematic coups… but there is something detached about the film, a succession of moods and notions that are often quite interesting but that never entirely cohere,” he writes. “White Noise is an expression of sincere and admirable faith. I just wish I could believe in it.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Writer-director James Gray’s coming-of-age film, “Armageddon Time,” is a memory play, depicting a mournful chapter from his youth.
December 19, 2022
Posted
December 18, 2022
Into the Darkness: Designing the (Ahem) (Visceral) Visuals of “Barbarian”
TL;DR
“Barbarian” is a below-the-radar title whose shocks and twists have made it a sizeable hit. DP Zach Kuperstein explains how he created the look for a Detroit-set story filmed on a farm in Bulgaria.
The visual language for the film is based largely on the work of David Fincher and Sam Raimi, with an Austrian horror movie “Angst” influencing the flashback sequences.
Produced by BoulderLight Pictures for $4.5 million, the horror film has made more than $43 million internationally since its release in September.
One of the most twist-filled and twisted movies of the year, Barbarian has become a sleeper hit. Produced by BoulderLight Pictures for just $4.5 million, the horror film has raked in more than $43 million internationally since it was released in September, and is now streaming on HBO Max.
A large part of its success can be attributed to the film’s look, which mixes Sam Raimi with David Fincher, according to the film’s cinematographer Zach Kuperstein.
“For Fincher, we looked at Mindhunter and Se7en as our two points of reference,” he told Matt Mulcahey at Filmmaker Magazine. “The main takeaway was that we wanted to have all the camera movement motivated and have it feel in sync with the characters. Then Raimi is just all over the place with the camera. Evil Dead was the most extreme version of that, but [we also watched] Drag Me to Hell. That movie is just wild with the camera movement. It’s constantly fast push-ins or canted angles.”
The setup for Barbarian: What do you do when you’re stranded at an Airbnb and the house is double-booked with a stranger?
The film stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long, and is the second feature from comedian turned writer-director Zach Cregger.
“I don’t think horror and comedy are too dissimilar,” Cregger told William Earl at Variety. “The anatomy of a scare is very similar to the anatomy of a laugh. It’s all about timing and tone and zigging when the audience expects you to zag. I feel like my time in sketch comedy has equipped me to play in this pool.”
Although set in a decaying Detroit neighborhood, Barbarian was mostly shot in an empty Bulgarian farm transformed into entire run-down subdivision (interiors were built at Sofia Studios).
We learn from Jim Hemphill at IndieWire that Bulgarian production designer Rossitsa Bakeva created a street with facades placed to accommodate Kuperstein and Cregger’s pre-planned camera angles (the entire film was meticulously storyboarded), and Kuperstein took advantage of a preexisting element of the farm for the film’s climax.
“In the script, the last scene took place on the roof of a church,” Kuperstein recalled, “but there was a silo there, and I just said, ‘Can we just forget the church and make this a silo scene?’ As soon as it came out of my mouth, I thought they were all going to think it was a stupid idea, but Zach said, ‘That’s great. Let’s do that.’”
Since it was too dangerous to put actors on top of the silo, the art department built a full-size replica of the roof on a stage and Kuperstein found an effective, lo-fi way of creating his exterior. “We surrounded the silo with 270-degrees of black fabric, poked a bunch of holes in it and backlit it, and it looked great,” Kuperstein said.
Bill Skarsgård as Keith in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
Georgina Campbell as Tess in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
Georgina Campbell as Tess in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
Georgina Campbell as Tess in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
Justin Long as Cale in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
Georgina Campbell as Tess in “Barbarian,” written and directed by Zach Cregger. Cr: 20th Century Studios
The DP worked with Light Iron senior colorist Sam Daley to define the show’s look. To give Daley an idea of what he and Cregger wanted, Kuperstein assembled a look book of photographic references including stills from the features Prisoners, Gone Girl and Sicario for night interiors, It Comes at Night for flashlight scenes, and American Beauty, Pleasantville and Austrian cult horror Angst for a 1980s flashback sequence.
“Texturally we tried to keep it limited,” the cinematographer explains in an interview on the Panavision website. “I find it best to keep the references really tight because otherwise it’s hard to articulate exactly what it is about each image that is related to the color.”
Using DaVinci Resolve Studio, Daley created a custom LUT for production in Bulgaria, but when the final grade began, he provided looks to Kuperstein and director Cregger. “I showed them different visual interpretations of the story, some pushing into the horror genre, others more traditional,” Daley told Blackmagic Design. “The Zachs (Kuperstein and Cregger) chose a more traditional look for the finish. I think that’s partly why the look of the film stands out; we’re not announcing to the audience that this is a horror movie via the color grade.”
The tight, dark spaces in the basement of the house created challenges not only for those dynamic camera moves (many of which Kuperstein operated handheld), but also in terms of lighting.
“I hate it in movies where there’s a flashlight scene and somehow there’s other light in the space,” Kuperstein tells IndieWire. “We did experiment with backlight in the tunnel, but it just looked fake.”
In order to shoot with the lowest possible light levels, Kuperstein chose the Sony Venice and directed the actors to light the scenes themselves with their flashlights, directing them to hold the flashlights in ways that would get the proper bounce off the wall or light the sides of their heads.
“I was very concerned about [Justin Long’s] flashlight in prep,” he tells Filmmaker Magazine. “I wanted to make sure that we had one that was a good-looking prop but was also bright enough and controllable so we could dial it in. Either the set decorator or one of the prop guys suggested this LED puck light that’s maybe three inches across called the Ape Labs Coin. It was battery powered and remote controllable. That was super helpful, because we were changing lenses and ISOs and needed the flashlight to be different brightnesses at different times. The art department found a flashlight, pulled out the guts of it and mounted that puck light inside.”
In these scenes the filmmakers wanted the audience to feel the claustrophobia of the space, but didn’t want the actors disappearing into the walls. Daley explained that he graded for the actors’ faces and let the flashlights clip a bit, “as if your pupils are struggling to see what lurks in the shadows and not what the light is illuminating.”
One of the more unique aspects of the film is its narrative structure, which introduces the female lead in act one and then resets itself with a male lead in act two. This unconventional approach to storytelling was a sticking point during Cregger’s attempts to sell the film.
“Oh, it was [a point of contention] for everybody. It took me two years to get anyone interested in this,” Cregger tells Brian Davids at The Hollywood Reporter. “I just kept hearing the same things: ‘You can’t introduce a character on page 50. We’re following a rapist for 30 pages; that’s just too gross.’ So I knew that these were all barriers to entry, but I also knew that these things that everyone was picking on were my favorite things about the movie.”
The film came to Disney as part of its acquisition of Fox and the studio decided to release the movie nationwide after strong word-of-mouth — even if this subversive movie goes against the Mouse House’s brand image.
“If the first part of the film is about a woman being hyper aware, and her brain is working overtime to categorize behavior and assess threat, then the inverse would be a predator with no awareness,” Creggar explained to Erik Piepenburg at The New York Times. “I wanted to structure the movie as two mirror images that converge.”
In the same interview he talks about Angst, the 1983 horror feature that made quite an impression on him. “That’s a hard-core film,” he says. “I saw it in my basement when I was a teenager. It tricked me. It lulled me into thinking it was one movie and then it punched me in the face. I felt betrayed and violated by it. I went through an experience that was deeper than watching a movie. It was so fun and radical and exciting. I love the idea that movies can be Trojan horses.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Jordan Peele taps Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to build a custom IMAX camera rig to capture the wide-open landscapes of “Nope.”
March 1, 2023
Posted
December 15, 2022
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed:” Art and Activism (on Both Sides of the Camera)
TL;DR
Documentary feature “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is about how photographer and artist Nan Goldin became an activist to provide support for people dealing with opioid addiction, and to protest the “artwashing” of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma.
Specifically, the film charts the ways that Goldin has leveraged her position in the art world to pressure museums and galleries to deny future funding from the pharmaceutical-giant — and to take down their family name from their walls.
Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras says she was determined to make a film about the unfiltered artist that wasn’t a normal biopic but one that showed how Goldin’s life and work intersect with her activism.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, an unconventional biopic of artist and activist Nan Goldin, is as much societal critique as a portrait and illustrates the extent to which the personal is political.
Its director, Laura Poitras, said to The Guardian’s Nadia Khomami that Goldin’s story is “a challenge to other artists“ to use their power to expose “the toxic philanthropy and whitewashing of blood money and institutions.”
The film examines the life and career of Goldin and her efforts to hold Purdue Pharma, owned by the billionaire Sackler family, accountable for the opioid epidemic. Opioid addiction has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the US over the last two decades.
Nan Goldin, always documenting. Images courtesy of Nan Goldin and Neon Filmes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, prompting HBO Documentary Films to acquire it for US television and streaming rights, Matthew Carey reports at Deadline. HBO will premiere the documentary — the only film to play at the Venice, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and New York Film Festival in 2022 — on March 19 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The documentary will also stream on HBO Max.
Goldin, a photographer whose work documented LGBTQ+ subcultures and the AIDS crisis, founded the advocacy group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017 following her own addiction to OxyContin. The group puts pressure on museums and other arts institutions to end collaborations with the Sacklers, who have long been financial supporters of the arts.
Goldin herself said she sought to demand accountability. “They have washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world,” she told Rolling Stone’s David Fear, and made good on her promise to make the political personal.
She succeeded too. With PAIN-led protests forcing The Met, The Guggenheim, the Louvre, and other art institutions to stop accepting Sackler money and take their names off their walls, leaving only a few institutions as hold-outs — and the Sackler name permanently tarnished.
Photograph of Nan Goldin from “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Nan Goldin/Neon
A self-portrait of Nan Goldin in “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Nan Goldin/Neon
Photograph of Nan Goldin from “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Nan Goldin/Neon
Photograph of Nan Goldin from “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Nan Goldin/Neon
Photograph of Nan Goldin from “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Nan Goldin/Neon
But All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is about more than her fight with the Sackler family. Goldin originally planned for the documentary to just tell the story of PAIN, but after contacting Poitras to make it she was persuaded to weave her own personal life into the picture.
Poitras is best known for her Academy Award-winning 2014 documentary Citizenfour about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. She also made Risk, a documentary about another social and political pariah, Julian Assange.
The filmmaker started documenting Goldin’s contemporary activism, but soon found herself wanting to talk more about the rest of Goldin’s life. “There was a shift,” Poitras tells Anne Thompson at IndieWire. “As every film happens, you start to learn more, and then, ‘Oh, we need to talk about other things.’ ”
That’s when Poitras made a deal with Goldin to do a series of candid audio interviews in which the artist opened up about her history of drug abuse and domestic violence, her previously undiscussed sex work, her sister’s suicide as a teenager, and her art career — including the controversial AIDS exhibition, “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,” which was censored by the National Endowment for the Arts.
To illustrate these aspects of Goldin’s life, the film draws heavily on the artist’s own work, as explained by Luke Hicks at Paste Magazine. Known best for her slideshows, Goldin flips through hundreds of pictures and tells story after story — each one gripping, culminating, well-delivered, giving way to an eagerness for the next — often returning to her most famous collection of over 700 photos on 35mm from 1983-2022, titled “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.”
“It’s my story told through my photographs — there’s not a lot of footage shot by other people,” Goldin told Artnet’s Sarah Cascone. “Poitras is telling my story in my voice, but it’s not exactly my version as I would tell it.”
Nonetheless, Goldin had final cut. “Nan and I could speak really freely,” Poitras tells Thompson, “and she would have an opportunity later before it would be shared with anyone wider to see if there was anything that went too far.”
The editing team, led by Joe Bini (We Need to Talk About Kevin), “had these ideas of the interweaving of past and present and an inner and outer world,” Poitras continues. “It was very [challenging] to keep the drama and the subtlety and subtext and that storyline going. And pointing the blame where it belongs: to the Sackler family, and a society that doesn’t hold people accountable, or provide health care for its citizens.”
The film is also a snapshot of New York City, where Goldin rubbed shoulders with the likes of John Waters and Jim Jarmusch. “She’s as much a chief creative force as Poitras on the outcome of the film (a ‘collaboration’ they called it at the New York Film Festival premiere), especially when you consider how much of it is Goldin’s slideshows,” Hicks notes.
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Nan Goldin in documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Nan Goldin in documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Nan Goldin in documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Cr: Neon
Giving it an A+ rating, Sophie Monks Kaufman at IndieWire says audiences are “given a whistle-stop tour through the subculture, with anecdotes from Tin Pan Alley, a bar where only women worked and Nan was ‘the dominatrix.’ Each vignette comes with its own colorful detail or punchline. It turns out that Goldin the orator cuts through the fugue of conformity with the same wallop as Goldin the photographer, and Poitras is there to give her the sharp edit that she deserves.”
According to Esther Zuckerman at The New York Times, the title of the film — conceived by Poitras — comes from the hospital records of Goldin’s sister Barbara, who died by suicide at 18. The director found that the phrase, taken from a report about what Barbara interpreted on a Rorschach test, encompassed the tragedies on display on-screen but also the celebration of resistance.
Fear says that the documentary is a “portrait of someone who’s taken family trauma, inspiration from her fellow outliers and the scars of a bohemian life, then used them to fuel a body of work that’s akin to a four-alarm fire.
“But it’s also a portrait of an activist and a major work of protest art in and of itself, sharing bio-doc screen time with footage of Goldin’s guerilla warfare against Big Pharma and calling out of bullshit. One is an extension of the other.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning documentary follows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s quest to identify who poisoned him in 2020.
January 8, 2023
Posted
December 13, 2022
Neo-Neorealism: How the “White Lotus” Adventures Mirrored “L’Avventura”
TL;DR
Season two, episode three of “The White Lotus” features a shot-for-shot remake of a scene from the 1960 Cannes winning film “L’Avventura.”
Jennifer Coolidge deserves credit for inspiring Tanya’s “Monica Vitti” day.
Other “White Lotus” film references include: “The Godfather” (shocking), “Brokeback Mountain,” “M. Butterfly,” and “The Talented Mister Ripley.”
Apparently, we have Jennifer Coolidge to thank for “The White Lotus” season two’s Italian fantasies. Showrunner Mike White asked friend and season one star Coolidge what she’d want to do if the show shot in Italy, Variety reports, and she responded with every woman’s glam Italian dream: vespas, hot guys in suits lighting your cigarette (well, maybe not the cig part.)
Jennifer Coolidge and Jon Gries in season two of “The White Lotus,” courtesy of HBO
Jennifer Coolidge in season two of “The White Lotus,” courtesy of HBO
Spoiler(ish) alert: Coolidge’s character, Tanya McQuoid, manifests that Monica Vitti daydream this season. W Magazine’s Ysenia Valdez notes: “One thing’s for sure, when Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, asked for a vacation like Monica Vitti, she got it.”
But she’s not the only one. Aubrey Plaza’s Harper Spiller recreates one of Vitti’s most iconic scenes from the Michelangelo Antonioni film “L’Avventura.”
Aubrey Plaza in “The White Lotus,” image courtesy of HBO
Aubrey Plaza in “The White Lotus,” image courtesy of HBO
Meghann Fahy and Aubrey Plaza in “The White Lotus,” image courtesy of HBO
“L’Avventura”
Valdez summarizes the plot of “L’Avventura,” writing that it “follows the OG blonde-brunette duo, Anna and Claudia, on a yacht trip with their friends and Anna’s boyfriend, Sandro—when Anna unexpectedly disappears. While searching for their friend, a rather untimely affair between Sandro and Claudia begins to unfurl, and the two grapple with the moral complexities of their romance.”
While shooting a day trip to the town of Noto, cinematographer Xavier Grobet realized they were in the very piazza where Antonioni had filmed Vitti’s eerie and uncomfortable stroll among a crowd of leering men.
Grobet and White seized the opportunity for a shot-for-shot recreation with Harper. TikToker @natergate paired the footage so you can observe how well they pulled this off for episode three, below.
Compare and contrast: 1960’s “L’Avventura” and 2022’s “The White Lotus.”
White told Variety’s Ethan Shanfield, “‘L’avventura’ is about the desperate search for the meaning of life as much as the actual disappeared woman. Obviously, ‘White Lotus’ touches on the malaise of wealthy people and that kind of search for meaning when you’re just lounging by an infinity pool.”
“‘L’Avventura’ is not the only film referenced in ‘The White Lotus,’ which is positively haunted by movies and the fantasies they engender,” Carina Chocano writes for the New York Times Magazine.
Coppola’s “The Godfather” trilogy is one of the most famous portrayals of Sicily and Sicialian American life, so it’s no surprise that White Lotus guest Bert Di Grasso (played by F. Murray Abraham) takes his son and grandson to the location of the infamous assassination attempt and expresses longing for its era of acceptable machismo.
Additionally, Chocano observes: “After her ill-fated Vitti cosplay leaves her alone and betrayed, Tanya takes up with Quentin, part of a group of ‘high-end gays,’ as she calls them, who recast her as a tragic heroine.
“Quentin tells her about his own lost love, but it sounds like the plot of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” and he takes her to the opera to see ‘Madama Butterfly,’ which, in this context, can’t help but call to mind ‘M. Butterfly,’ and a very specific form of romantic deception. As the line blurs between stories and lies, the vibe shifts closer to ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley.’”
Director of photography Ben Kutchins employs color, framing and exposure to create a distinctive look for the HBO satire.
December 19, 2022
Posted
December 12, 2022
“Holy Spider:” The Persian Film Noir Iran Doesn’t Want You to See
TL;DR
The Iran protest movement is making “Holy Spider” — about a real-life serial killer acting with impunity in an Iranian holy city — especially resonant for audiences.
The story is presented in the style of film noir and is intended as a political statement about society. The movie is Denmark’s entry into the foreign language category at the Oscars.
Iranian cinema typically censors the depiction of women without hijabs and full body coverings, but director Ali Abbasi says his priority was to create a film that gives women their bodies back.
Holy Spider is a film about the rise and fall of one of Iran’s most infamous serial killers, but the director’s intention was not to make a serial killer movie.
“I wanted to make a movie about a serial killer society,” director Ali Abbasi says. “It is about the deep-rooted misogyny within Iranian society, which is not specifically religious or political but cultural.”
Released earlier this year, the thriller has taken on new significance as violence against women in Iran has been in the news amid mass protests against the country’s “morality laws.”
“I don’t want people to see this as a message movie, although misogyny and dehumanization are themes we explore,” he says. “My intention was to hold up a mirror to Iranian society, and while the mirror might be dirty or broken, it shows a good portion of what it feels like to live there.”
Inspired by actual events two decades ago in Mashhad, Iran, Holy Spider is a thriller that follows a crusading female journalist investigating the “Spider Killer,” an unknown man who believes he is doing God’s work by purging the streets of female prostitutes.
Zahra Amir Ebrahimi as Rahimi in director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
Arash Ashtiani as Sharifi, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi as Rahimi, and Nima Akbarpour as Judge in director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
Zahra Amir Ebrahimi as Rahimi in director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
Mehdi Bajestani as Saeed in director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
Zahra Amir Ebrahimi as Rahimi in director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
Director Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider.” Cr: Metropolitan Filmexport/Alamode Film
The filmmaker, who lives in Denmark, shot the film in Jordan to bypass Iranian state censorship. His chief crew are Danish — including editor Olivia Neergaard-Holm and DP Nadim Carlsen DFF — and it’s now Denmark’s submission for the International Feature Film Oscar.
Abbasi was living in Iran in the beginning of 2000s when Saeed Hanaei was caught and put on trial. It was during his trial that the story really caught his attention.
“In a normal world there is no doubt that a man who had killed 16 people would be seen as guilty. But here it was different: a portion of the public and the conservative media began to celebrate Hanaei as a hero. They upheld the idea that Hanaei simply had to fulfill his religious duty to clean the streets of the city by killing these ‘dirty’ women. This was when the idea of making this film came to me.”
Over the next 15 years he and Afshin Kamran Bahrami wrestled with the script, at one point considering turning it into a novel before the realization that it would be more interesting to tell the story from the point of view of asking: “What kind of society, setting, and characters would encourage his behavior? Where does this thinking flourish?” Abbasi explained to A.frame’s Alex Welch. “As a result of that process, the script transformed from a story about a serial killer to a story about a serial killer society.”
From there, the film evolved into a genre movie, which Abbasi calls a Persian film noir, in which the female investigative journalist plays an increasingly central role.
“In a straightforward serial killer movie, you have a killer with a twisted mind and a cool, smart detective or journalist who is trying to decode that mind for the audience,” he relates in his director’s statement. “The criminal is revealed over time, as in The Silence of the Lambs. But the climax of Saeed’s story for me has always been the fact that he was hailed by some as a hero. This story is not about the mystery of being a serial killer — it’s about the banality of Saeed’s life, how ordinary and unsophisticated he was. For me this is more interesting than a mythical Buffalo Bill-type character.”
The city of Mashhad where the story takes place is presented with a seedy underbelly. “It’s noir to the core,” Abbasi says. “I love film noir as a genre and I wanted to create a Persian noir from its familiar elements. All those lost souls, broken dreams and dark places that emerged out of post-war America are part of the everyday landscape of most Iranian cities. I wanted to find a language and iconography that came from the place itself, in this case Mashhad, rather than from a Humphrey Bogart movie, or Chinatown, or David Fincher’s Zodiac.”
Those references imply a romanticism that is absent from this at-times brutal depiction of violence.
“It’s not like we’ve made an explicit movie — but it’s one of the few movies set in Iran that conveys a certain realism. Any movie you see is presenting a parallel reality of Iran, like movies from the Soviet era. Almost all of them adhere to a set of written and unwritten rules, even movies critical of the Iranian government. The taboos that are never broken in Iranian films include nudity, sex, drug use and prostitution. But those things remain a big part of Iranian society and they are relevant to my story, even part of its atmosphere.”
Initially the lead character, Rahimi, was intended to be a younger, more naïve and inexperienced reporter. We learn from Gregory Ellwood at the Los Angeles Times that over the course of the three-year pre-production, the filmmaker auditioned hundreds of candidates before he found the right actress.
That was until she changed her mind a week before the shoot was set to begin. Despite his desperation, no one expected Abbasi to find his replacement in the project’s casting director, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi. She was a star of Iranian TV in the 2000s but left the country in 2008 after becoming the target of a smear campaign.
She went on to win the Best Actress award at Cannes in May for her performance and is generating Oscar buzz.
“My little context with journalists in Iran was that you need to be really thick-skinned to be able to do anything in this country because as a woman, and especially as a woman that is doing social and crime reporting, you are really dealing with the most misogynist part of the misogynist society, with the court system, with the police and all that,” Abbasi told Ellwood. “I think the character we end up with, is someone who grew out of Zar Amir Ebrahimi the actor. That really changed the trajectory of the character in big ways.”
The film’s depiction of women, in general, feels very purposeful and a direct critique of the censorship, on-screen in Iranian cinema and in public, surrounding women’s bodies.
“The fact of the matter is that [Iranian cinema] adhere[s] to a certain censorship and certain view of women’s lives that is not true,” he tells Welch. “Nobody in Iran, even if they’re super religious, sleeps with their headscarf. They don’t always walk around with 10 meters of cloth around them. Women have their own lives. They have their sexuality, and their jobs. They have a physicality, and that physicality has been absent from Iranian cinema’s presentation of life.
“With Holy Spider, it felt like we had to be concrete about the bodily experiences of our female characters, whether it involved violence, sex, or showing their painted toes. I think that in itself is a political act.”
Noir is in fashion yet again. This cinematic style is trademarked by stark lighting, saturated or black and white colors and ambiguity. Plot tropes focus on crime — those who commit it, convict offenders, or cover the ill doings, all with a cynical eye to human nature. Find out what you need to know with these essential insights curated from the NAB Amplify archives:
Drawing on the tradition of Greek tragedy, Romain Gavras’s new feature for Netflix, “Athena,” is an explosive epic in more ways than one.
February 23, 2023
Posted
December 7, 2022
“EO:” How an Animal’s POV Shows Audiences Everything About Humanity
TL;DR
A new narrative feature told entirely from the POV of a donkey won the jury prize at Cannes and is Poland’s Oscar entry.
Octogenarian director Jerzy Skolimowski’s film is so brash, freewheeling and inventive that you’d assume it was the work of a brilliant 25-year-old.
“EO” speaks directly to the horror of our destruction of the natural world and its nonhuman inhabitants without bringing God into the picture.
Told from the point of view of a donkey, “EO is a thrillingly imaginative piece of filmmaking: a strange, haunting epic about a donkey that couldn’t feel more of our moment,” raves John Powers at NPR.
The Sideshow & Janus Films production won the jury prize at Cannes this year, and is Poland’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Marshall Shaffer at Slant says, “The film’s poetic use of image and sound to align the audience with a donkey’s perspective is a triumph of artistry and empathy alike.”
Venerable critic Amy Taubin thinks EO is one of the greatest films she’s ever seen, but then she also includes French director Robert Bresson’s austere masterpiece about the drudgery of a donkey, Au Hasard, Balthazar, in her top five films of all time.
Seeing Au Hasard, Balthazar in 1966 was a pivotal moment for the director of EO, Jerzy Skolimowski, as he recounted to Eric Kohn at IndieWire.
“I was mostly watching the film with a slightly cynical professional attitude to learn how it was done,” he said. “When the film ended, I found out I had tears in my eyes.”
Skolimowski realized that the donkey’s experiences, which take some tragic turns, were uninhibited by the artifice of human performance. “That was the biggest lesson I ever got from a filmmaker,” he said. “The animal character can actually move the audience stronger than any actor.”
It took the director until now to get around to making his donkey movie, though — and it wasn’t a slam dunk that a donkey was the animal of choice either.
Skolimowski and his wife Ewa Piaskowska, the film’s co-writer and co-producer, explained to Shaffer how the project came about.
“We decided that we should try to make a film about something that really touches our hearts and minds in a direct way. Something that we would like to protest. We [discovered] that the only cause that was really moving us emotionally was the fate of nature and animals. And that is how we got close to the decision to offer the main part to an animal performer, and we chose the donkey.”
Lorenzo Zurzolo as Vito in director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Lorenzo Zurzolo as Vito in director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO.” Cr: Janus Films
There was something about the eyes of this particular animal that spoke to the filmmakers.
“It was all in the eyes,” Skolimowski tells Amanda Champagne-Meadows at Deadline. “We were struck by the look of the donkey’s eyes… enormously large with this very specific melancholic look.” They realized that the same shots set from the POV of the animal would reinterpret the situation, making everyday objects and situations anew.
Director of Photography Michał Dymek, PSC discussed his collaboration with director Jerzy Skolimowski in an article on the Panavision website, sharing the visual inspirations behind the film.
“I would describe the look of EO as a fusion of youth and experience mixed with hunger for visual madness and the love of filmmaking seen through a donkey’s eyes,” he said. “Our movie references included the documentary films of Bogdan Dziworski, Federico Fellini’s 8½ and Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux. From art, our references were the paintings of Leon Tarasewicz and Tomasz Tatarczyk and the works of Antony Gormley. In addition, I was searching for inspiration by observing reality and trying to understand my surroundings. I also spent some time on Instagram looking for creativeness.”
Working on EO, he said, “offered me unbelievable artistic freedom, which I have never had before in my short professional career. At the same time, it meant a lot of responsibility, and I needed to deliver.”
Skolimowski tells Taubin that a donkey somehow shared the attitude of an observer who doesn’t participate but with his presence alone makes a comment. “His eyes rarely moved from one object to another. He was like a camera placed for a master shot. He sees everything but doesn’t point out any details as being important. He is just there. We both felt that this is the animal who could be the lens of the future film.”
From IndieWire we learn that Skolimowski cast six donkeys of the same breed for the part of EO and followed the same filmmaking pattern for each scene: He began with a master shot before gradually moving in for closeups of the donkey’s face, followed by a point-of-view shot.
While his crew was setting up various camera angles or taking breaks, Skolimowski would spend time whispering into the donkey’s ears, which replaced the usual process of coaching an actor in between scenes. “We managed to create a kind of bond which, for my private use, I called ‘co-existence,’” he said.
The director told Matthew Jacobs at Vanity Fair that a little more than half of what we see EO do was pre-planned, while “maybe 40% or 35%” was improvised. “It’s an exercise in perceiving people as animals through the donkey’s eyes,” Piaskowska comments. “The animal itself has these connotations: the beast of burden and its benevolence. It’s an absolutely innocent being.”
Largely due to COVID-related issues (the film was shot over 26 months, with some stoppages reaching six months), EO has three directors of photography: Michael Englert, Michal Dymek and Pawel Edelman.
They experimented with a wide-angle lens, to approximate a donkey’s field of vision, “but it was just uncomfortable to look it and it would have tired the audience, and it really didn’t bring us closer to the experience of the donkey,” Skolimowski relates to Shaffer.
The director is a veteran of the Polish New Wave who trained under Andrzej Wajda and co-wrote Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. His father was executed by the Nazis and he himself grew up in the repressiveness of Communist Poland. Marvel fans may know him from his memorable role asweapons dealer Georgi Luchkov in 2012’s The Avengers. He’s now 84, but directing with all the verve of a Pulp Fiction-era Tarantino.
This panache is on display everywhere in EO, says Powers, “with its onrushing camera, color filters, aggressive music and utter confidence about throwing viewers into the donkey world where there’s more poetry than plot and nobody explains what’s going on.”
It would be interesting — or possibly just too devastating — to program EO back-to-back with Andrea Arnold’s cow’s-eye view of life and death, Cow, from 2021, or Pig, the 2021 Nicolas Cage cult hit — another heartstring tugger.
This particular humble animal comes with more baggage than just Bresson’s classic film, none of which was lost on the filmmakers. As related to Vanity Fair they thought of Apuleius, the ancient Roman philosopher who accidentally turns himself into a donkey. They thought of the eponymous donkey from “Platero and I,” a Spanish poem by Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez. They thought of Don Quixote’s squire performing heroic deeds on a donkey’s back, Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, and even gloomy Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
In recent months there have been two other awards contenders featuring donkeys. The Banshees of Inisherincast Colin Farrell’s dairy farmer alongside his pet donkey Jenny. In class satire Triangle of Sadness, a group of rich travelers marooned on an island painstakingly kill one to survive. All of which leads Vanity Fair to wonder if 2022 is not the Year of the Ass.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
When Your Story is a Film But Also a Crazy Dream: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Bardo”
Production on “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: SeoJu Park/Netflix
TL;DR
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Bardo” is a personal odyssey through the mind and memory of the Mexican auteur and, by extension, Mexican history.
The film follows renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker (Daniel Giménez Cacho) returning home and struggling with his identity, familial relationships, his memories, and the history of his country.
Shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji in wide-screen 65mm, “Bardo” is full of arresting, hallucinatory sequences that linger in the mind.
Avoiding what Iñárritu calls the “multi-structure,” the director viewed “Bardo” as an opportunity to challenge established cinematic conventions he had grown tired of seeing.
Alejandro González Iñárritu likes to say that he made Bardo with his eyes closed.
“Basically, all the other films I have made with my eyes open, and whatever it made me feel, I was relating to a reality that I saw on the outside,” he tells Patrick Brzeski in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter. “With this film, basically, the process was, I had the need to close my eyes. When you close your eyes, obviously, then you look inward — and that’s a much more complex territory.”
Bardo has been described as many things, but subtle and shy are not two of them. This is an “epic, phantasmagoric comedy drama,” says Brzeski. It’s a personal odyssey through the mind and memory of the Mexican auteur and, by extension, Mexican history.
Even the full title, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, strains for the magical realism of fact blurred with fiction and the genre that grew out of Latin America.
Produced by Netflix, and co-written by Iñárritu and Nicolás Giacobone, the film chronicles a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who returns home and grapples with his identity, familial relationships, the folly of his memories, and the history of his country. He seeks answers in his past to reconcile who he is in the present.
Writer/director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: SeoJu Park/Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: SeoJu Park/Netflix
Íker Sánchez Solano as Lorenzo in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: SeoJu Park/Netflix
Writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Daniel Giménez Cacho on the set of “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho and Ximena Lamadrid as Camila in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Griselda Siciliani as Lucia in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: Netflix
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio Gacho in “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” Cr: SeoJu Park/Netflix
Iñárritu told the audience at the London Film Festival that he saw the film as an opportunity to challenge established cinematic conventions that he has grown tired of seeing, as Zac Ntim reported in Deadline.
“The essence of cinema is language, and nobody talks about that anymore,” Iñárritu said. “It’s all about the box office. But I like to explore the possibilities of language. And I think this film serves the purpose to liberate from certain conventions that I’m a little bit tired of or not interested in anymore.”
The director had previously played with cinematic language, including lengthy one-take camera moves and overlapping storylines in films including Amores Perros, Babel, Birdman and The Revenant, the latter two landing him back-to-back Oscars for best director.
“I was a little tired of the multi-structure,” he said in London, as reported by Variety’s Greg Wetheratt. “I wanted to see how it felt to make a film about one person. I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it. It was scary to sustain one line of narrative.”
In this endeavor, Iñárritu is widely noted to be in debt of his cinematographer Darius Khondji. “Bardo, shot in wide-screen 65 millimeter through lenses that seem to warp the edges of the frame, is full of arresting, hallucinatory sequences that linger in the mind long after Silverio’s self-pitying harangues have faded,” A.O. Scott writes in his review for The New York Times.
The director wants us to “surrender to the flow of the film” Iñárritu tells Brzeski, likening his own movie to that of Spanish-Mexican master Luis Buñuel. “It’s a cinematic experience to immerse yourself in. Cinema is a dream being directed, as Buñuel said. If you ask this film for the same structure of the TV series you have been binging, you will be fighting with it. Just go and get lost and forget about the world and yourself for a couple hours.”
Stream of consciousness may have been the intent but putting that on-screen necessitated precise planning.
“The complexity of this film has been the most challenging filmmaking I have ever done in my life,” Iñárritu told Brzeski. “Because every single frame, and every single movement was completely pre-visualized and rehearsed. It was incredibly complex, but it was done with complete control. You become like a doctor who is doing open-heart surgery. You cannot get emotional, you just need to be incredibly effective and pragmatic. The patient can die if you get emotional.”
Among the dichotomies that Bardo examines is his own sense of identity a Mexican who left the country to find success and acclaim over the border in the United States.
“If you stay away from your country for a long time, your state of mind dissolves and changes. That’s what the research for this movie was about,” he said to The Hollywood Reporter in a separate interview with Brzeski and Alex Ritmani. “When you go back to that country, as I did for this movie, it’s like standing in front of a mirror or meeting an old friend. It was like reinterpreting a dream or a memory.”
The “three amigos” in conversation: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuarón
He takes aim at the insularity of American culture, telling Brzeski, “It can be very hard for many Americans to get outside their bubble, because it’s a very self-serving culture.
“You can go anywhere in the world and expect everyone to speak your own language,” he continues, “So, it’s sometimes very difficult for American people to grasp the emotion that we are talking about here. But that’s what I have attempted to do with this film. Even if some people cannot relate to it, I think there are millions of immigrants around the world who know this feeling. It doesn’t matter if you are Mexican or American, or privileged or not. When you lose your roots, this is what it feels like.”
As Scott notes in his review, Bardo is a movie that preempts criticism and strikes back. In the film, at a party, Silverio meets up with Luis, a one-time rival who has become a star of Mexican tabloid television. Luis takes Silverio to task for self-indulgence and pretension, accusing him of playing the “artiste” for the Americans and forgetting where he came from.
Silverio responds with a tirade about the venality and hypocrisy of a media that sacrifices integrity and decency on the altar of ratings and social media likes.
“Iñárritu isn’t always the clearest or most cogent thinker,” Scott signs off, “but the power of his images often renders such objections moot.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Film auteur Park Chan-wook is riding the wave of the explosion of Korean culture in the US with his latest feature, “Decision to Leave.”
January 22, 2023
Posted
December 1, 2022
Director Alek Keshishian and Selena Gomez Get Real in “My Mind & Me”
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
TL;DR
In the Apple TV+ documentary “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me” we see the toll fame has often taken on the star’s mental health.
We also learn what director Alex Keshishianfeels was important while making a documentary of her life: the intrusion of social media and inane questions thrown at the singer on press tours.
The 93-minute feature was made from more than 200 hours of reality-shot and archive material.
Though Disney channel star turned pop singer and TV producer Selena Gomez hasn’t shied away from speaking publicly about her mental and physical health struggles over the years, the new Apple TV+ documentary is deeper, darker, and more specific about these incidents. In Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me we see the toll this has often taken on her mental health.
The film is directed by Alek Keshishian, whose previous credits include acclaimed music documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) that broke new ground in presenting a fly-on-the-wall snapshot of the public and private effect of fame on an artist and those around them.
They struck up a friendship, and “she asked if I would consider doing a tour doc with her. I said, ‘I don’t think you really want me to do a tour doc with you, because I don’t make the sort of tour docs that everyone’s been doing in your lifetime.
“I shoot cinéma vérité and I’m spoiled because my first experience was with Madonna who gave me access to everything all the time.’ ”
Despite that knock-back, Gomez seemed even more keen to work with Keshishian. So they agreed a trial.
It didn’t go well.
Gomez and Keshishian while filming “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“I brought in my crew and we shot for two weeks, then I cut it down to a five-minute [short] so she could see the kind of film I would make. She was like, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful, but could you not show me crying? I don’t want my fans to see me break down like that.’ And so I said I didn’t think it was the right time for me to make a documentary with her. We agreed to just shelve the footage.”
What changed was a charity trip that Gomez made in 2019 to Kenya. Keshishian agreed to go “because it was for a good cause,” and found in the course of shooting in Africa and then press events with the singer in Europe that there was a doc to be made inspired by the conflicting way people treated her fame and her reaction to that.
Gomez herself tells Rachel Handler at Vulture that in Kenya she “realized that people in every part of the world are dealing with the same thing: their minds. Your mind is everything. It provides for your body, for your soul. But when I got to London, I gotta be honest, I was kind of frustrated and didn’t even want anyone to film anything. I was just a little frustrated with some of the questions… the press-tour moments in London and Paris. Those questions were shitty.”
To Keshishian this was the story. “I was more interested in some levels of implicating the paparazzi who are unbelievably cruel,” he told Variety’s Jazz Tangcay. “I showed unrelenting interest [of Gomez] in the press. I wanted to show how cruel some of that stuff that’s yelled to a 24-year-old girl is, how brutal it is. On another level, there’s this misogyny, that the woman is always somehow that dumped one, and that the woman should be jealous.”
To Handler he added, “There’s a real part of me that wanted to make a statement to young people that pursuing the artifice of fame and whatever — it isn’t a bunch of roses. It’s not perfect, and in some ways, it can prevent actual human connection. That’s what you see in London and Paris. She’s not connecting with human beings after connecting so deeply with human beings in Kenya. That’s really the shock to her system. That’s what makes her feel sad.”
It would seem there is a darker side to fame than thirty years ago and the always on pressure of social media is to blame.
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.” Cr: Apple TV+
“You’re constantly working on presentation,” he tells Mia Galuppo at The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m talking about people who are really doing social media. So, I wanted to indict fame to a certain degree. I wanted to make people realize this is not all fun and games. She’s not in Paris having a great time. Granted, these are first world problems, you can say, but if you want to know what it does to the mental health of somebody, that level of isolation — it doesn’t make people joyful.
He whittled down more than 200 hours of footage for the 90-minute feature, explaining to Tangcay at Variety that much of that was archival footage. “I knew I had to tell parts of this story through archival, which is very time-consuming. It took us six months just to do the string outs which meant taking each scene and shortening it.”
He could have released a two-hour, 30-minute cut, “and pleased her fans who would never tire of her,” he added to Galuppo. “But I wanted us to mean something for people down the line who aren’t her fan. One of the things I always kept telling my editors is: I’m not looking to make a room spray of Selena Gomez. I want the most distilled and concentrated version of this story so that you spend 93 minutes and hopefully you come out feeling differently about your own life as well as Selena’s.”
As Handler says, many musicians have done their versions of “personal documentaries,” in which there is a sense that they’re still controlling the final product — that there’s a level of PR machinations going on behind the scenes. So did Gomez want final cut?
“There are a lot of things that I didn’t put into this,” Keshishian tells Tangcay. “It’s a potent experience, but it doesn’t have everything.”
Director of Photography Jenna Rosher captured a year in the life of the pop star’s meteoric rise from social media cult to global celebrity.
November 29, 2022
Machine Learning: How MoMA’s New AI Artwork Was Made (Trained)
TL;DR
MoMA’s newest digital art exhibit is an AI trained on 180,000 works of art ranging from Warhol to Pac-Man.
Created by pioneering artist Refik Anadol, the installation in the museum’s Gund Lobby uses a sophisticated machine-learning model to interpret the publicly available visual and informational data of MoMA’s collection.
The installation has prompted speculation on the nature of art and what it tells us about a machine’s “dream-state.”
MoMA is exhibiting a new digital artwork that uses artificial intelligence to generate new images in real time.
The project, by artist Refik Anadol and titled Refik Anadol: Unsupervised, uses 380,000 images of 180,000 art pieces from MoMA’s collection to create a stream of moving images.
“It breathes,” Fast Company’s Jesus Diaz marvels, “like an interdimensional being… this constant self-tuning makes the exhibit even more like a real being, a wonderful monster that reacts to its environment by constantly shapeshifting into new art.”
To be fair, Diaz was being shown around by the artist himself, who says he wanted to explore how profoundly AI could change art. In an interview for the MoMA website, alongside Michelle Kuo, Paola Antonelli and Casey Reas, Anadol shares, “I wanted to explore several interrelated questions: Can a machine learn? Can it dream? Can it hallucinate?”
To which the answer is surely no. But if nothing else, Unsupervised has succeeded as art should in feeding the imagination.
The display is “a singular and unprecedented meditation on technology, creativity, and modern art” which is focused on “reimagining the trajectory of modern art, paying homage to its history, and dreaming about its future,” MoMA states.
The work is described by Anadol as a “Machine Hallucination” that brings a “self-regenerating element of surprise to the audience and offers a new form of sensorial autonomy via cybernetic serendipity.”
To understand what Unsupervised means, you have to understand the two main methods with which current AIs learn: Supervised AIs — like OpenAI’s Dall-E — are trained using data tagged with keywords. These keywords allow the AI to organize clusters of similar images and, when prompted, will generate new images based on what it learned.
In this case, the AI was left to make sense of the entire MoMA art collection on its own, without labels. Over the course of six months, the software created by Anadol and his team was fed 380,000 high-resolution images taken from more than 180,000 artworks stored in MoMA’s galleries, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Gertrudes Altschul.
The team created and tested various AI models to see which one produced the best results, then picked one and trained it for three weeks.
Crafting the neural network and building the training model to create Unsupervised is only half of the story.
To generate each image in real time, the computer constantly weighs two inputs from its environment. Diaz explains that it references the motion of visitors, captured by a camera set in the lobby’s ceiling. It then plugs into Manhattan’s weather data, obtained by a weather station in a nearby building.
“Like a joystick in a video game, these inputs push forces that affect different software levers, which in turn change affect how Unsupervised creates the images,” Diaz describes.
The results probably need to be experienced before judgement can be passed.
“AI-generated art has arrived,” says Brian Caulfield, blogging for NVIDIA, whose StyleGAN forms the basis for Anadol’s AI.
“Refik is bending data — which we normally associate with rational systems — into a realm of surrealism and irrationality,” Michelle Kuo, the exhibit’s curator, explains to Zachery Small at The New York Times. “His interpretation of MoMA’s dataset is essentially a transformation of the history of modern art.”
In his interview for MoMA, Anadol compares his work to breakthroughs in photography.
“Thinking about when William Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype, and when he was playing with the early salt prints, pigmentation of light as a material — working with AI and its parameters has very similar connotations: the question of when to stop the real, or when to start the unreal.”
For example, Unsupervised is able to draw on the vast array of digital representations of color from artworks on which it was trained, and from that, it seems, play back colors of its own.
Anadol imagines looking at historic paintings like Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, and remembering their richness and personality. Now imagine the data set based on these works, one that considers every detail that your mind cannot possibly hold.
“Because we know that that EXIF [exchangeable image file format] data that takes the photographic memory of that painting is in the best condition we could ask for,” Anadol comments. “I think that pretty much the entire gamut of color space of Adobe RGB most likely, exists in MoMA’s archive. So we are seeing the entire spectrum of real color but also the machine’s interpretation of that color, generating new colors from and through the archive.”
Speaking to Diaz at Fast Company, David Luebke, vice president of graphics research at NVIDIA, says simply, “Unsupervised uses data as pigment to create new art.”
Digital artist and collaborator Casey Reas offers another perspective for how we should think about an AI, rather than it somehow being conscious.
“What I find really interesting about the project is that it speculates about possible images that could have been made, but that were never made before,” Reas says. “And when I think about these GANs, I don’t think about them as intelligent in the way that something has consciousness; I think of them the way that the body or even an organ like the liver is intelligent. They’re processing information and permuting it and moving it into some other state of reality.”
Anadol and the exhibit curators would have us think that the art world is in a new “renaissance,” and that Unsupervised represents its apex.
“Having AI in the medium is completely and profoundly changing the profession,” the artist noted. It’s not just an exploration of the world’s foremost collection of modern art, “but a look inside the mind of AI, allowing us to see results of the algorithm processing data from the collection, as well as ambient sound, temperature and light, and ‘dreaming.’ ”
Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Much more is coming. Modern generative AI models have shown the capability to generalize beyond particular subjects, such as images of human faces, cats, or cars. They can encompass language models that let users specify the image they want in natural language, or other intuitive ways, such as inpainting.
“This is exciting because it democratizes content creation,” Luebke said. “Ultimately, generative AI has the potential to unlock the creativity of everybody from professional artists, like Refik, to hobbyists and casual artists, to school kids.”
Next, Watch This
https://youtu.be/tlH11UC_-5Y
From the Museum of Modern Art: How Artists and Using and Confronting Machine Learning
Behind the Scenes (and Screens) of Netflix’s “1899”
TL;DR
“1899” was shot at Dark Bay virtual production stage in Germany. Dark Bay is currently the largest LED volume in the world.
It’s not about the walls (or what’s on them). True virtual production “is about composition of the foreground and the actors and giving them a true-to-reality environment to play in,” according to “1899” Producer Philipp Klausing.
ARRI modified large-format anamorphic Alfa lenses to create custom bokeh, enabling the actors to move more freely inside the volume.
Some people have joked that virtual production technology has flipped the “fix it in post” script on its head. But the creators of eight-episode, multilingual mystery series “1899” understand that virtual production requires designing the story, as well as the set, with rigor and detail.
Showrunners Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar consider themselves “old school filmmakers,” but as they told Deadline, the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing travel bans meant that the pan-European shoots they’d intended were off the table.
Fortunately, the “Dark” creators had inked a deal with Netflix (and additional funding from the Investment Bank of Brandenburg) that meant they could put the necessary resources into creating a production studio custom-built for their ambitious, sea-set project.
Netflix did much more than dip its toes in VP with “1899;” the company signaled strong belief in the tech’s potential and in its globalization efforts.
The move was consistent with other investments; in 2018, the streamer hired Girish Balakrishnan to serve as its director of virtual production. Nonetheless, it was VP of Global Franchises Kelly Luegenbiehl who first floated virtual production as a possibility to “1899’s” showrunners, Deadline reported. Friese and bo Odar visited Netflix’s Shepperton Studios volume to get a sense of the tech’s applications before committing.
“I envision that Germany can become a European leader in virtual production” through the Dark Bay facility, Netflix Director of International Originals Rachel Eggebeen told Deadline’s Tom Grater in 2021. Since “1899” wrapped production, Dark Bay has been utilized for at least one additional project.
Friese and bo Odar’s Dark Ways production company turned to the ARRI Solutions Group to create the Dark Bay virtual production stage at Potsdam’s Studio Babelsberg.
The ARRI team outfitted the studio with 55-meter-long and seven-meter-high LED wall, curved at 270°, as well as 70 ARRI SkyPanels, which illuminate the volume.
Framestore’s Jack Banks told Tech Crunch that these panels had to be hi-res and water-resistant (“1899” is set on the water…) — all while managing computing power requirements.
Banks said his team collaborated “with Epic and Nvidia to bring dual graphics card support online in our custom Unreal Engine build, giving us roughly 25-40% increase in frame rate on our environments.” Additionally, Dark Ways needed “a robust color pipeline” developed in concert with “1899” Digital Imaging Technician Richard Muller. Framestore also helped create a low-latency system consisting of new software and firmware communicating data from the camera to offer near-real-time lens tracking.
The project was also equipped with ARRI’s Alexa Mini LF camera and rental lenses designed for the project; the company tweaked its large-format anamorphic Alfa lenses to adjust the bokeh to allow movement inside the volume (more on that later), Dark Ways MD Philipp Klausing told Adrian Pennington in an interview for IBC.
“Everybody is focused on content on the wall and think that this is virtual production, but it is not,” Klausing clarified. “VP is about the composition of the foreground and the actors and giving them a true-to-reality environment to play in. We want to record them, not the background.”
“The story was the driving input in setting up the stage,” Klaussing explained to Tech Crunch’s Devin Coldewey. “We have a show set on the ocean, on a steamship that doesn’t exist in the world, and we knew with corona we couldn’t really do the show classically.”
It seems that the influence runs in two directions. Friese told Deadline that virtual production “makes you write scenes differently, it allows you to explore things you might not be able to explore on a natural set.”
Referring to its creative potential, Coldewey compared virtual production to “a box of toys that creators have only just begun to unpack.”
While virtual production techniques solved many of “1899’s” filming challenges, it also introduced unique strictures. Specifically, the physical walls of the volume itself meant that certain shots were initially impractical or even impossible, and stage access was limited by the scale of the walls.
The showrunners devised an ingenious yet practical solution: a rotating LED wall and a new “pizza slice” shooting technique.
However, the showrunners devised an ingenious yet practical solution: a rotating LED wall and a new “pizza slice” shooting technique. Balakrishnan explained that the teams still had to contend with swapping out elements of the physical set, even if they could change the LED scene with the touch of a button. That’s where the turntable came in (and 180-degree views reentered the chat).
Production Designer Udo Kramer and Construction Manager Andreas Vieweg were charged with, essentially, inventing the rotating volume (and dressing the various sets featured in it).
Balakrishnan explained, “The unique benefit of the revolving stage is… you can have multiple physical and digital sets on the stage within a single shooting day, and rotate as needed to shoot multiple angles and coverage.”
In addition to the movement of the turntable: on “1899” the ship is “constantly moving, the camera is too. I think 95 percent of the shots are handheld to make it feel alive and wild,” bo Odar explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Roxborough.
And keep in mind that the LED walls themselves aren’t traditionally two-dimensional. The content captured on site was scanned and transformed by Unreal Engine “into 3D models so you can actually walk through them. If I push the camera towards the wall, the landscape moves with us,” bo Odar noted in his Deadline interview. “It’s about creating 3D worlds in camera that can move and change with you.”
But in order to make that happen, bo Odar explained, “Everything has to be decided beforehand, you have to create it, build it, so it’s all ready to shoot in camera.”
Additionally, bo Odar told The Hollywood Reporter, “You have to think in layers and how you combine those layers. Usually, the foreground is the actor and then the background is what you have on the LED volume screen. But the mid-ground, the thing in between, that’s what actually glues these two layers together, and it’s the most important part of the whole process.”
It’s not yet clear if all the buzz around the making of the series will bear out into the popularity Netflix prizes. Per Dan Einav’s Financial Times review: “[T]here’s enough intrigue fueling this ship to keep us going along with it. It’s just hard to tell if we’re heading anywhere truly interesting.”
“1899” is revealed to be the first production at Netflix’s Dark Bay, a new Volume stage built at Studio Babelsberg in Berlin.
November 15, 2022
“Atlanta” Finished Like It Started: A Terrible, Wonderful Dream
TL;DR
Donald Glover’s surrealist FX comedy ended its fourth and final season with a “what just happened?” ending.
The show “specialized in leaving indelible, discordant images in the minds of its audience, like a television stuck between channels.”
Critics say “Atlanta” was a different kind of prestige TV. It never explained itself and was all the better for it.
The finale of Donald Glover’s FX/Hulu series Atlanta proved divisive for critics. There’s universal agreement that the show scaled great heights, but the extent of its legacy seems ambiguous.
Perhaps that’s just how Glover and his co-creator brother Stephen would want it. The finale nods toward Inception with a “what just happened?” ending.
“Everything has felt so dream-like in Atlanta anyway,” writer and executive producer Stephen Glover told Deadline’s Katie Campione. “[Whether it’s] real or fake, it all feels real to you anyway. I think that’s just the idea that we walked away with.”
“I hope it’s a Rorschach test!” Hiro Murai, the show’s director, said to Joy Press at Vanity Fair. “I think people are going to take it with different levels of seriousness.”
Atlanta debuted in 2016 and went on to win six Emmys. The show is about a local rapper named Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) trying to make it with help from his cousin-manager Earn (Donald Glover) and stoner sidekick Darius (LaKeith Stanfield).
The first season was wildly acclaimed, followed by the second, which cemented its reputation for fearlessly combining surrealism horror comedy and cultural critique.
COVID intervened, putting back production on Season 3. The Glovers decided not to repeat the same formula and come out of a different box, relocating some of the characters away from Atlanta to Europe. Campione comments that the fourth season recaptured the buzz and the series finale, “It Was All a Dream,” makes a partial return to the original spirit of the series.
“Wrapping up a whole series in a single episode is always hard, always polarizing,” Murai told Variety’s Selome Hailu. “We’re always living in this semi-heightened dream state, not that the finale tells you explicitly whether it is a dream or not.”
The show “specialized in leaving indelible, discordant images in the minds of its audience, like a television stuck between channels,” Niela Orr at The New York Times writes. “The finale was no different.”
As much as the show is obsessed with existential angst, you can’t escape its particular cultural gaze. It’s scripted and created by two guys who grew up in Atlanta “in a very Black neighborhood, and a lot of that stuff is presented very matter-of-factly — it’s not presented for white viewers, and it is put in there without any ceremony or explanation,” Murai tells Press.
Stephen Glover’s initial strategy had been to “Trojan-horse FX,” — the show’s network — by staying vague about what he planned to produce, he told the NYT. “If I told them what I really wanted to do, it wouldn’t have gotten made.”
For instance, Season 4 featured a documentary-style episode on the history of Disney’s A Goofy Movie, “perhaps the Blackest animated movie ever made” Vulture’s Sam Sanders observes.
“Paper Boi’s struggle is very synonymous with a lot of Black people’s experience. Even though we’re not all rappers, we’re not all from the hood; everybody understands that story.”
In the past, many Black television series “dressed for success, overexplaining references, watering down jokes or building cozy versions of Black life to ensure their characters were watched in large numbers, even if they weren’t truly recognized,” Orr says.
“Glover’s TV masterpiece, aided by the specialization of the prestige TV and streaming eras, was different: understated, obsessed with the in-joke, the nod between familiars.”
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Glover as Earn Marks, Zazie Beetz as Van, and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van and Donald Glover as Earn Marks in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Donald Glover as Earn Marks in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, Zazie Beetz as Van, and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van and Donald Glover as Earn Marks in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles and Calvin Dutton as Demarcus in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in the series finale of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Murai is not Black, and several interviewers pick up on this as if it made a difference. He is currently one of television’s most in-demand figures. He is an executive producer on Station Eleven and The Bear. He’s currently working on Glover’s upcoming Amazon series Mr. & Mrs. Smith, as well as developing his own projects.
“It certainly helps that I’ve been working with Donald for 10 years at this point,” he told Hailu. “The show is built on the experiences of Donald and his Stephen growing up in Atlanta. I’m acting as a tour guide to their hyper-specific experience of living in the city you know. It’s a strange role, depicting somebody else’s memory.”
Atlanta — the city itself — was ultimately depicted across the series as “a booming and multifarious city at the center of America’s culture industry,” Variety’s Daniel D’Addario writes, “where the potential for tragedy or sudden violence or an expression of pain hung intriguingly in the air.”
Maybe Atlanta was most itself when acting as a sort of anthology series, he suggests, “drawing upon the collective bad dreams endured by Black Americans in the 21st century and spinning them in endless new directions. But that also means that it’s a show that can lack a center.
Critiquing its various decisions ultimately feels beyond the point, D’Addario concludes. “Atlanta seems more than most series precisely like the thing its creators wanted to make, both in its virtuosity and its moments of overreach… Even as it frustrated me, Atlanta showed a new way for this art form to look and feel.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Donald and Stephen Glover bring season 3 of “Atlanta” to FX and Hulu in what critics call “a true American masterpiece.”
November 15, 2022
Colorist Tim Masick Brings an “Untouched” Look to Tár… One Shot at a Time
Writer-producer-director Todd Field’s first film in 16 years, “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, explores the cult of personality, power imbalances and cancel culture. Cr: Focus Features
Tár, director Todd Field’s first feature film since Little Children in 2006, stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, an enormously successful orchestra conductor facing some potentially career-ending revelations and, perhaps worse, a reckoning with her own sense of the kind of person she is. The film, shot by Florian Hoffmeister (who received the Golden Frog at this year’s Camerimage Festival for the work), was designed as a character study to be presented in a way that meticulously avoids any sort of editorializing.
The audience is presented with scenes of the eponymous character’s behavior at work and in private and hints about past actions but Field ensured that nothing, from the performances to the editing to the music or sound design, is done in such a way as to announce how anyone should feel about it.
This concept, of course, informed Hoffmeister’s cinematography and, in turn, became a directive for Senior Colorist Tim Masick of Company 3 in handling the color grade.
Masick had gotten to know Field while grading a number of commercials Field directed during his extended hiatus from feature films. The colorist understood the directive, noting that the director “wanted the images to look authentic and untouched.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
There is a significant difference between working to make scenes look untouched and not touching the images. An acting performance that convinces the audience that everything just sort of happened without preparation can take enormous preparation to achieve. A scene that looks “unlit” can be the result of very precise lighting to yield that effect. And imagery that looks like it wasn’t color graded often requires many hundreds of tiny adjustments to get that point.
Selecting areas and using windows, keys, sharpening or a combination, it draws the eye to specific areas. This isn’t uncommon but, “We did this for pretty much every shot.”
Masick, who worked out of Company 3’s London location (principal photography was done in Germany) and graded in DaVinci Resolve 17, says of the color sessions, “We added quite a lot of subtle changes to the work Florian captured so beautifully. We went through every shot to add a small amount of shading here, a Power Window there to bring out certain elements of the frame.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Early in the film, there is a long single-take scene with Tár and her devoted assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) riding together in the back of a limousine. An expensive large red Hermes handbag in-between the two should raise questions for sharp-eyed viewers. Earlier, the conductor had openly admired a bag just like this one. Is this the same bag? If so, how did she come by it? Might she have gone out and purchased one just like it? And what would the various scenarios say about the character?
“It’s very subtle,” Masick notes, “but as they speak back-and-forth, Francesca notices the bag and we ramp up the light on it. Not enough to notice anything unusual, just enough to draw the viewer’s eye.”
Later in the film, one of Tár’s questionable pursuits leads her through an area of derelict buildings which are very different from the opulent environments she’s been shown in prior.
As she moves around the crumbling structures, she moves in and out of shadow and Field had Masick enhance these transitions from light to dark areas to enhance the feel of the unusual space and to isolate and bring up portions of the frame that show water trickling out of an abandoned structure.
“This is the type of thing colorists often do, but I don’t think I’ve ever done it to this extent.
“Working with Todd is infectious because he is so precise about the meaning of every shot,” Masick sums up.
Each tiny adjustment was designed to slightly enhance the viewer’s understanding of what’s actually happening within the frame, “but he wanted everything we did to take away any sense that we were imposing ideas or feelings on top of the story, and that can involve a surprising amount of work.”
“The Banshees of Inisherin:” Martin McDonagh Tells a Wonderful/Terrible Tale
TL;DR
Writer-director Martin McDonagh fuses his trademark dark humor with something altogether more profound about the nature of friendship, creativity and mortality in his new drama, The Banshees of Inisherin.
The Banshees of Inisherin follows a soured friendship between the cheerful but dim Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and the more tortured, artistic Colm (Brendan Gleeson).
Cinematographer Ben Davis used the landscapes of two Irish islands, Achill Island and Inishmore Island, to convey the dueling personalities of the film’s two main characters.
With the The Banshees of Inisherin, writer-director Martin McDonagh has fused his trademark dark humor with something altogether more profound about the nature of friendship, creativity and mortality.
It follows a soured friendship between the cheerful but dim Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and the more tortured, artistic Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who summarily tells Pádraic one morning that he no longer wants to be pals. Over the course of the film, Pádraic’s initial bafflement curdles into resentment, while Colm’s attempts to stay away from him in their tiny community repeatedly fail.
On the face of it, a relationship breakup is a thin plot on which to hang a film, but this was McDonagh’s starting point.
“I just wanted to tell a very simple breakup story,” he told Deadline’s Joe Utichi. “And to see how far a simple comedic and dark plot could go.”
For all its comedy, the drama is best described as a melancholic ballad. McDonagh, who won best screenplay at the Venice film festival , says he tried to imbue the friends’ breakup “with all of the sadness of the breakup of a love relationship… because I think we’ve all been both parties in that equation,” he told Miranda Sawyer at The Guardian. “And there’s something horrible about both sides. Like knowing you have to break up with someone is a horrible, horrible thing as well. I’m not sure which is the best place to be in.”
Depicting that sadness accurately was his intent, he explained to AV Club’s Jack Smart: “It was about painting a truthful picture of a breakup, really. A sad breakup, a platonic breakup, which can be as heavy and sad and destructive as a divorce, as a sexual or loving relationship coming to an end.”
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson and writer-director Martin McDonagh on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
Kerry Condon on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Barry Keoghan as Dominic Kearney in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Writer/director Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell on the set of “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá and Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Kerry Condon as Siobhan Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Jon Kenny as Gerry, Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty, Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin, and Pat Shortt as Jonjo Devine in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabhá in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Cr: Searchlight Pictures
There’s more to the film than this. Setting the story in Ireland in 1923, with the Irish Civil War playing out in the background, is a metaphor that spins the tale a wider web.
“You don’t need any knowledge of Irish history,” McDonagh told The Atlantic’s David Sims. “All you need to know, really, is that [the civil war] was over a hairline difference of beliefs which had been shared up until the year before. And it led to horrific violence. The main story of Banshees is that, too: negligible differences that end up, well, spoiler alert, not in a good place.”
The divide between the one-time friends spirals into violence so quickly that the original relatively mild cause for dispute is forgotten. “I think that’s what was interesting about this story, that things unravel and get worse and worse, sometimes without, oftentimes without intending to,” McDonagh told UPROXX’s Mike Ryan. “And then become unforgivable and irreparable. And I guess that’s true of wars as much as is true of this little story about the two guys.”
There are other layers too. Not least of which is what IndieWire’s Eric Kohn shares as McDonagh’s “deep questions about national identity,” both within the series and his own personal identity. Despite writing Irish characters (in this film and his debut, In Bruges) and setting previous theatrical plays in the country, McDonagh hails from London, although his parents are indeed from west coast Ireland.
McDonagh’s last movie set in the country was the 2004 short Six Shooter, which won an Academy Award. McDonagh’s first trilogy of plays, starting with The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1996, took place in Galway. His second trilogy — which remains unfinished — took place on the Aran Islands, and Banshees was shot on Inishmore and Achill, two islands off Ireland’s west coast.
Inisherin itself is fictional, partly to put the real events of the civil war at one remove from the events onscreen, and also because he and cinematographer Ben Davis use the landscapes of the two islands to convey the dueling personalities of his two main characters.
“All in all, it certainly seems like McDonagh wants to grapple with the history and personality of the country after setting it aside for almost two decades,” Kohn notes.
At the same time, the filmmaker’s depiction of Ireland risks backlash. “There’s a certain degree of unease in Ireland about McDonagh’s post-modern, heightened versions of Irishness,” shares Irish film critic Donald Clarke. “The films and plays do well here. But there is a tension in Ireland about his treatment of the country.”
Critics also point to supposed southern stereotypes in the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Kohn indicates that McDonagh was often lambasted on the promotional tour of that movie for depicting a racist police officer (Sam Rockwell) with some measure of empathy.
“His characters are exaggerated to an almost allegorical degree in order to comment on the society around them, which has led some American audiences to see his view of the country as naïve,” Kohn writes. “Banshees burrows into the stereotype of Irish people at pubs, guzzling pints to the tune of ebullient folk music, and molds it into an emotionally resonant character study.”
That character study is also linked to a meditation on death and how an artist should make best use of their time. In the film, Colm is a musician and wants to use the rest of his days creatively, rather than sitting in the pub with Pádraic talking nonsense. Which raises several questions, including: do you have to be selfish and cruel in order to create? Can an artist be nice?
That is accompanied with a threat: If Pádraic doesn’t leave him alone, then Colm will start lopping off his own fingers.
“I thought it was interesting that an artist would threaten the thing that allows him to make art,” McDonagh said. “Does that thing make him the artist?”
It’s clearly something that preys on McDonagh’s mind. “I’m 52. You start thinking, Am I wasting time? Should I be devoting all my time, however much is left, to the artistic?” he commented to Sims. “That’s something that’s always going on in my head — the waste of time, the duty to art, all that. So you start off being on [Pádraic’s] side and understanding the hurt, but you have to be completely truthful to the other side… You should feel conflicted.”
McDonagh says decided that he’s going to spend what creative time he has left — he reckons “around 25 years” — making films rather than plays. His reasoning? Films are quicker.
“I always used to think they took longer than plays, but with this one we were filming it a year ago, and now it’s out,” he tells Sawyer. “But if you’re lucky enough to have successful plays… to get that right with each move, to cast it and take care of it, go to rehearsals, that’s five years of your life.”
It was also clearly nagging at him to unleash the genie of Gleeson and Farrell’s chalk and cheese interplay that audiences lapped up in the 2008 cult hit In Bruges.
“It feels like it was two days ago that we made In Bruges together but time passes so quickly,” he said in response to The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood wondering if there will be a third collaboration. “None of us are getting any younger. I don’t have an idea now, but just that little ticking bomb is somewhere in me. So, I do want to get them back together.”
In The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh reunites the pair only to break them up in the first scene. “A delectable bit of cruelty for the audience,” observes Sims.
Although he made In Bruges to his satisfaction, the director apparently faced pressure from execs at Focus Features at every turn. He now insists on having the final cut, which he got for Banshees, a movie produced by Disney-owned Searchlight. Kohn points out that his four movies have all been made for around $15 million, a manageable scale by studio standards that lets McDonagh get away with creative freedom.
“That is the reason why the films are singular,” McDonagh said. “It is all me. It hasn’t been watered down, for good or bad.”
“Aftersun,” the debut feature from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, has been lauded by Sight and Sound magazine as the top film of 2022.
October 24, 2022
Family Pictures: James Gray’s “Armageddon Time”
Jeremy Strong as Irving Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Focus Features
Jeremy Strong as Irving Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Focus Features
To really appreciate the new film Armageddon Time, it helps to understand the writer-director James Gray and his backstory.
On the surface, it’s a coming-of-age film, not far removed from last year’s sleeper hit Licorice Pizza in its nostalgia for the 70s and 80s. Gray’s Armageddon Time is a memory play depicting a mournful chapter from his youth.
The filmmaker talked about his most personal project yet, starring Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins, and the pain of losing the final cut on Ad Astra to multiple outlets.
“The truth of the matter is, you always have to do some condensing,” Gray told MovieMaker’s Tim Molloy about writing the film. “But it’s not far off at all. I tried to stay as personal as I could with the material. I tried to get the details right… to get the plates that we ate off of, and we did; the hat that my grandfather wore, and we did; the chandelier that we had in the dining room, the wallpaper, the kitchen appliances. And those are just the surface elements, of course.”
He added, “It’s not autobiographical, really, autobiographical means [the characters would] have my parents’ names, and would wear exactly what they wore. It’s a little bit of a fantasia of my youth. So it’s personal, but not really autobiographical in that way.”
Born in 1969 and raised in Queens to a family of Holocaust survivors (his grandfather changed the family surname from Greiszerstein when he arrived in the US), Gray shot exteriors just a few blocks away from this childhood locale.
According to IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, Gray’s childhood house looks more or less the same as it did 42 years ago — “but the gate that his father built to box in the garbage cans is the only physical evidence that remains of his family.”
Gray shares how, “When I was growing up in that neighborhood, it was very much an Archie Bunker kind of place. It was a white working-class WASP population, with those nauseating slave statues on a couple of the lawns. Today you go back there and it’s almost exclusively Asian and Orthodox Jewish people, and so in some ways there was a kind of archaeological quality to what I was doing.”
Indeed, Ehrlich believes the film is “perhaps the most lucid and damning film ever made about the specifically Jewish experience of assimilating into the same conditional whiteness that a previous generation had to escape.”
Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff and Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Focus Features
Jeremy Strong as Irving Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Focus Features
Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Anne Joyse/Focus Features
Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Jaylin Webb as Johnny Crocker in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Anne Joyse/Focus Features
Jaylin Webb as Johnny Crocker and Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Focus Features
Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins as Grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Anne Joyse/Focus Features
That’s because, religion aside, the other theme of the film is race and the adult-run irrational power dynamics that youngsters like Gray seemingly had to navigate. The narrative drive of the film is a friendship between eleven-year-olds Paul (Michael Banks Repeta) — a cypher for Gray — and Johnny (Jaylin Webb) who is Black. Together, they steal an Apple computer from their school. Paul gets away scot-free while Johnny remains incarcerated. It’s based on a true incident that still plays on Gray’s mind. Did it really play out like that?
Director of photography Darius Khondji and director James Gray on the set of “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Anne Joyse/Focus Features
“That was our ultimate plan,” he told Seth Abramovitch from The Hollywood Reporter. “But I stole Star Trek blueprints from Bloomingdale’s, and we got caught. Very expensive blueprints from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And it was like $50, which in 1979, 1980 was a fortune.”
Abramovitch asks if he ended up in jail: “It ended up with us in this room at Bloomingdale’s with their security people and, basically, he stayed behind,” Gray shares. “My father got me out of there. I never did see him again. [Revisiting that moment] was a way to use the past to reflect upon the problems of the present. And on a plain, personal level, the loss of that friendship was painful for me.”
With the exception of Paul’s doting and wily grandfather, played by Antony Hopkins, the adults don’t come off well in this film.
“Armageddon Time holds Gray’s striving parents accountable for their compromises, but it also loves them for their tenderness,” Ehrlich says. Gray responds that, “of course I wanted to memorialize them,” in regard to these characters (his father died of COVID earlier this year). “I wanted to say that despite all their flaws — and they had many — there was beauty in them to me.”
Most of the people who are portrayed in the film are no longer alive to see it, “which adds to the feeling that Gray made the movie to exorcize many of the ghosts that have haunted his entire body of work,” Ehrlich notes.
One person who doesn’t appear but looms over the picture is Donald Trump. In one of those quirks of fate, Trump’s father Donald did feature in the young Gray’s life albeit tangentially. And he is portrayed in the film, rejecting handouts to the poor while giving them to his own children.
This is considered a return to form for the auteur after Ad Astra which, I for one, feel was unjustly maligned. That it didn’t quite achieve the ethereal quality of classic sci-fi is perhaps down to Gray’s ceding control over final cut in return for landing a larger budget. That’s certainly the way he sees it and he is adamant once bitten twice shy.
“When you don’t have final cut, and when the ideas of others are more important than yours, and you’re the writer-director, then the waters get very muddied,” he shares with Molloy. “And the work is necessarily compromised. Some of that comes down to budget — what the perceived risk is. But I made that choice to give up final cut on Ad Astra, which was a terrible mistake. And so I vowed that, if a film has my name on it, particularly as the writer director, I can’t have that happen again.”
By contrast with a far smaller budget and with just three weeks planned for theatrical release before heading to streaming, Gray says he didn’t compromise a single composition for the small screen.
“The truth is something like 45% of Americans now have home theaters — some outrageously high number,” he says. “So very few people are going to see it in the wrong aspect ratio now. It’s not like 1986 where everyone watched it 1:33. Very few people are going to see it on a very small screen. There are people who are going to watch it on the iPhone, but no amount of compositional help can accommodate for watching your movie on an iPhone. The screen is too small. The biggest closeup in the world is not going to help you out.”
Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins as Grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz in director James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” Cr: Anne Joyse/Focus Features
Incidentally, the new film’s title comes from the Clash song “Armagideon Time.”
“I was hugely into the Clash by 1981, so it seemed to fit,” Gray tells Abramovitch. “Then I remembered Ronald Reagan always talking about Armageddon. He was always mentioning the world ending. It was cultural trauma. That weighed on kids in 1980. In the Reagan interview clip you see in the movie, he’s actually talking about Armageddon as a result of homosexuality, which is crazy. He’s talking about Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Next, Listen to This
WATCH THIS: James Gray, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong & More on Armageddon Time | NYFF60
Director James Gray and cast members Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb sit down to discuss Armageddon Time at the New York Film Festival:
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Control and Chaos: How Todd Field Tells the Story of “Tár”
Writer-producer-director Todd Field’s first film in 16 years, “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, explores the cult of personality, power imbalances and cancel culture. Cr: Focus Features
An exploration of the cult of personality, power imbalances and cancel culture, writer-producer-director Todd Field’s Tár provides a strong argument as to why the Academy Awards should include an Oscar for Best Casting among its myriad filmmaking accolades.
Tár stars Cate Blanchett (The Aviator, Blue Jasmine) as Lydia Tár, the groundbreaking conductor of a major German orchestra about to undertake both a book launch and a much-anticipated live performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Blanchett is joined by supporting cast members Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, and Mark Strong. Tár premiered at the Venice Film Festival to major acclaim, becoming an Oscar contender for both Blanchett and Hoss, who plays Sharin, Lydia’s partner and co-parent to their six-year-old adopted daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic). Distributed by Focus Features, Tár is currently in theaters and is anticipated to arrive on streaming platforms in early 2023.
Adam Nayman, in his review for The Ringer, writes, “Playing a world-renowned conductor holding court during a glitzy onstage interview sponsored by The New Yorker, Cate Blanchett is almost self-parodically in her element in Tár.
“Which is, of course, the point,” he continues, “If you’re going to write a character who’s famous for being preternaturally talented — a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, with homes in New York and Berlin, a spot on Alec Baldwin’s podcast, and an EGOT on her résumé — it makes sense to cast a phenomenally accomplished actress known for her poise and graciousness. Every time Blanchett’s Lydia Tár inhales to speak, on subjects ranging from musical composition to gender parity in the arts, she’s breathing rarefied air; when she calls room service for water, it sounds like an acceptance speech. The barbed and topical hook of Todd Field’s psychological thriller is whether the same electric brilliance that has elevated a person like Lydia so highly into the cultural firmament (and its adjoining tax bracket) is, or should be, enough to keep her there when she also secretly indulges in her more basic instincts.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
“This script was written for one artist, Cate Blanchett,” Field underscored in his director’s statement. “Had she said no, the film would have never seen the light of day. Filmgoers, amateur and otherwise, will not be surprised by this. After all, she is a master supreme.
“Even so, while we were making the picture, the superhuman skill and verisimilitude of Cate was something truly astounding to behold. She raised all boats. The privilege of collaborating with an artist of this caliber is something impossible to adequately describe. In every possible way, this is Cate’s film.”
Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, BSC employs long takes and intense close-ups to capture Blanchett’s portrayal of a complex character who is toppled from her pedestal, Variety’s Jazz Tangcay recounts.
Taking place in real time, the film’s opening sequence at The New Yorker Festival was intended to place the audience directly inside the room, Hoffmeister tells Tangcay. “After three minutes, you think you’re sitting there watching this event,” he says, adding that the idea was to avoid any camera movement. “We were just there. We didn’t try to guide the audience in terms of importance by panning. We were just there and it was about finding the right angle.”
Another long sequence that Hoffmeister identifies as crucial to setting the film’s tone features Lydia teaching at Julliard. The script for that scene, he reveals, was nearly 10 pages long.
“It’s her walking around the room, addressing the students, teaching and talking about her passion. But she’s also annoyed by this student and his political attitude towards music,” he explains.
“This is her true being. It fell to me to show the two elements. It was about giving Cate the chance to deliver an amazing performance and modulate the camera,” Hoffmeister continues. “She also becomes alive in that moment, because it’s so important to her; this is about her passion and her making music. From, a visual point of view, we could unleash the camera after having constrained it for so long.”
Nina Hoss stars as Sharon Goodnow and Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Following extensive testing to determine camera moves, Hoffmeister says the scene was achieved in one shot. To help make it an immersive experience, the DP and director worked closely on developing nuance. “We discussed whether we would do a close rendering of a face or a close-up and get closer to the person and film them. What are those differences?”
This collaboration with Field and Blanchett helped inform Hoffmeister’s approach to lighting and the development of a roadmap.
“She has two states of mind. One was about appearances such as what we see at the beginning of the film,” he says. “She’s catering to this narrative of what she thinks she is and what other people think she is.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
The second state of mind is Lydia’s private life away from the spotlight. “That’s when she is anxious, and the audience can observe some of those feelings where the narrative is unprotected in those moments when she is by herself or with her lover,” Hoffmeister says.
Sequences inside the orchestra hall were shot on location, which presented the cinematographer with a number of practical constraints, including creating enough brightness for the orchestra members to read sheet music by. There was sufficient light available for wide shots, but for close-ups, “it wasn’t so pleasing,” he said. “So, I went in and very subtly diffused the lights.”
Field, who wrote, produced and directed Tár, is a somewhat elusive figure as a filmmaker. Tár is his first film in 16 years, and in the time since his previous films, the five-time Academy Award-nominated In the Bedroom (2001) and 2006’s Little Children, which garnered three Oscar nods, Field has had the perhaps unenviable position of starting and stopping several high-profile film and television projects, as Kyle Buchanan details in The New York Times.
“After his first two movies both drew Oscar nominations, he was hailed by critics as one of the best new American directors, but all attempts to mount a third project were stymied,” Buchanan says. “His film adaptations of the novels Blood Meridian, The Creed of Violence and Beautiful Ruins never made it into production, and though Field spent years working on a biopic of the deserting American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, co-writing a political thriller with Joan Didion, and scripting a huge Showtime series based on the Jonathan Franzen book Purity, those projects ultimately fell apart, too.”
Despite these many setbacks, Focus Features finally “called his bluff,” as Field recounts. “Focus went to extraordinary lengths once they read the script to say, ‘Yes, we want to make it. Let’s go.’ From the time the script was handed in to the time you saw it is less than two years, and in Hollywood, that’s like light speed.”
Sophie Kauer stars as Olga Metkina in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Field began his career as an actor, appearing in numerous film and TV projects including Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise (1993), Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking (1996), and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), before entering film school at the AFI Conservatory. He described his journey from in front of the camera to writing and directing his own films in an interview with Rodrigo Perez for The Playlist.
“From the beginning, I wanted to make my own films,” he said. “Like I’m a highly technical director and the way that some people talk, people say, ‘Well, you were an actor, so you’re an actor’s director.’ Or, ‘You’re a writer because you write your own stuff.’ OK, sure, I wrote my own stuff because it was cheap. I couldn’t afford anyone else. But the truth is, the larger part of why I was interested in doing this has to do with cinema, and the films that I love, and photography and, how do we see things and what my point of view is. So, I don’t know if any of that has to do with anything in terms of like, why I made a film in 16 years or whatever, but I think that sometimes it’s jack of all trades, master of none kind of thing.”
Noémie Merlant stars as Francesca Lentini in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
In his review of the film for The Atlantic, culture writer David Sims says Tár is Cate Blanchett’s best performance of her career, breaking down an icon’s fall from grace to its most elemental form.
“Tár’s ‘cancellation’ (which is simply the easiest way to describe what happens to her reputation in the film) has its specifics, but Field seems most interested in the elemental process of watching someone with such power and poise veer out of control,” he writes. “The unraveling of Tár begins with just a few whispers before spiraling in unpredictable directions. Field isn’t exactly rooting for her downfall, and neither was I; instead, he’s depicting the way such scandals inspire rubbernecking from all walks of life.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Sims, noting that Field played the “furtive piano player Nick Nightingale” in Eyes Wide Shut and had close ties with Kubrick, says “Tár is worthy of comparison to that great master’s work. Every visual composition is meticulously arranged, and every surreal twist of imagery feels nuanced and earned.
“But most important, the world around Tár seems real and tangible, so when it slips into chaos, the viewer becomes as overwhelmed as the protagonist. Field understands that for the stakes of this insular story of one fictional celebrity’s reputation to matter, Tár’s manifold scandals can’t be easy to evaluate. She’s not a clear-cut monster or a martyr being railroaded by a system of prudes. Blanchett and Field make her as complicated as the art she loves and respects, even as love and respect become the emotions she struggles most to wield and receive.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman says Tár takes Field to an entirely new level as a filmmaker. “The movie is breathtaking — in its drama, its high-crafted innovation, its vision,” he lauds. “It’s a ruthless but intimate tale of art, lust, obsession, and power. It’s set in the contemporary classical-music world, and if that sounds a bit high-toned (it is, in a good way), the movie leads us through that world in a manner that’s so rigorously precise and authentic and detailed that it generates the immersion of a thriller.”
Gleiberman also appreciates Hoffmeister’s camera work, noting that Tár “looks like a documentary directed by Stanley Kubrick…. The compositions are naturalistic in an imposing, ice-cool way, and what they express is the casual calculation with which Lydia monitors every facet of her existence.”
Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s “Tár.” Cr: Focus Features
Filmmaker Magazine’s Vadim Rizov argues, “If Tár is an anti-cancel culture/#MeToo film — and I believe that it ultimately is, no matter how much situational ambiguity is deliberately baked in to cover its tracks) — it comes by the contextual specifics of its test case honestly.”
But Rizov takes exception with the cinematography, noting that “Technically, Field errs on the side of master shot simplicity, moving the camera rarely and always with purpose; it’s not a super-formalist film, instead a calmly competent one.”
He describes the first hour of the film as a “barrage of back-to-back dialogues” that is “impressively airless,” before veering off into nearly supernatural and/or horror territory with “doom-y dollies into an ominously ticking metronome, an unseen woman screaming in a forest.”
Rizov also picks up on an important cinematic reference Field employs: “Rehearsing Mahler gives the film an excuse to namecheck Visconti, a connotational reminder of his use of the composer’s fifth symphony’s “Adagietto” in Death in Venice — this isn’t nearly as self-consciously or successfully operatic, but it’s a nice aspirational reference point. And, since Death in Venice focuses on what we could label an ‘age-inappropriate’ relationship, its invocation also echoes Tár’s thornier larger question, which is basically yet another round of ‘Can you separate the artist from the art, and should you?’ ”
The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane also weighs in, praising Blanchett for her “imperious and incandescent” performance as Lydia Tár.
“When we first meet Lydia, she’s about to be interviewed onstage, in New York, by my colleague Adam Gopnik, who is persuasively played, in an audacious stroke of casting, by himself,” Lane quips with his characteristic wit. Seriously, isn’t it high time for the Motion Picture Academy to begin recognizing casting directors for their craft?
Lane neatly summarizes Lydia’s reckoning:
“Through glimpses of e-mails, passing chatter, and scraps of dreams, we learn of a young trainee conductor who was fixated on Lydia (or was it vice versa?), and whose career Lydia has since attempted to block. There are hints of a pattern — of other young women who have slipped under Lydia’s spell and suffered accordingly. Her personal assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), is a guarded and dedicated soul, who receives scant reward for her devotions; was she, too, once an object of Lydia’s interest? Rumors abound, a legal deposition is required, and Lydia is Tárred and feathered on social media. When she travels to New York, in the company of a Russian cellist, Olga (Sophie Kauer), we see a snap of them, on Twitter, plus the tagline ‘TÁR’s fresh meat.’ ”
Watch director Todd Field, cast members Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, and Sophie Kauer, and composer Hildur Guonadóttir discuss Tár at the 60th New York Film Festival in a conversation moderated by NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim:
“Decision To Leave:” Park Chan-wook’s Love Story/Detective Story
Film auteur Park Chan-wook is riding the wave of the explosion of Korean culture in the US with his latest feature, “Decision to Leave,” starring Park Hae-il as Detective Hae-jun and Tang Wei as Seo-rae. Cr: Mubi
Park Chan-wook, the celebrated auteur, has been puzzled by some of the media reactions to his latest film, Decision to Leave, which, following a theatrical release in the US and the UK, will be available for streaming on Mubi in mid-October. More than a few journalists have levelled questions about it at him, noting that, although Chan-wook had previously billed it as an adult love story, the film didn’t have the violence of Oldboy or the erotism of The Handmaiden.
Even at the film’s press conference in Cannes, he had to deflect the same question. A Korean journalist asked, via a translator, “There weren’t many sex or violence scenes in this film, could you tell us why?” An obviously exasperated director replied, “Had another director made this film you wouldn’t have asked that question, why are you asking it to me? When there’s not something, you ask why isn’t it there.”
Chan-wook went on to explain that even potential distributors were confused about how to promote his film and wanted to say that it was a new development in his work. He rebuked them. To him, Decision to Leave is a film for adults. But, he commented, perhaps hoping to preempt any further questions in the same vein, “I made a film that was the exact opposite of what people expected.”
In fact, as the director wrote for Empire, his choice of which films to make is largely based on what the previous one was like. “Looking back, it seems that each film I conceive is a kind of reaction to the previous film. After Joint Security Area, which explored the division of Korea into North and South, I was moved to make Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, about class issues within South Korea; the ‘cold’ Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance was followed by the ‘hot’ Oldboy; after the masculine Oldboy came the feminine Lady Vengeance, and so on.”
To serve his point, before Decision to Leave,Chan-wook had made the BBC series The Little Drummer Girl, which he saw it as a call to action for what was to come. “[The Little Drummer Girl] was issuing me orders: not to fashion some kind of complicated drama about global politics, but to make the simplest of love stories. Even The Handmaiden’s plot had also been quite complicated. Now, I wanted simplicity.”
Whether his procedure of choosing projects is open to closer scrutiny is irrelevant. Chan-wook is riding the wave of the explosion of Korean culture in the US. His next project is perhaps an affirmation of that — The Sympathizer, a TV show starring Robert Downey Jr. about a half-French, half-Vietnamese man who served as a spy for Communist forces during the Vietnam War.
Park Hae-il as Detective Hae-jun in director Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave.” Cr: Mubi
But Patrick Brzeski from The Hollywood Reporter doesn’t concern himself with putting the director in a box, praising both him and the movie. “Park’s Cannes return was a triumph: Decision to Leave won the Best Director prize and has been picked by South Korea to represent the country for the 2023 Oscars in the Best International Feature category.”
In his interview with Chan-wook, Brzeski wondered why the director was especially curious about how the film would be received. What was his inspiration for the film? “Over the years, I’ve watched lots of police dramas and procedurals, where the lead character is a policeman or a detective. I love these kinds of films, but I’ve always thought that the depiction of the protagonists in these stories is quite far from reality, because they’re either really tough and violent, or some kind of genius detective. I’ve always wanted to see a cop film where the detective is just like you or I — a normal guy who just goes to work and does his job in an ordinary way,” Chan-wook responds.
“This film is quiet, and it’s not at all obvious. But still, there’s a consistency — and I think that’s the style. I was trying to follow in the footsteps of the grandmasters, you know, from Korean cinema’s past. So I’ve tried to give it a more classic look. But as I said, I’m very curious to see how the audience will react to that, because I understand that it’s not what people expect from me.”
Tang Wei as Seo-rae in director Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave.” Cr: Mubi
Decision to Leave begins when a detective, played by Park Hae-il (The Host), meets the wife, played by Tang Wei (Lust, Caution), of the dead man he’s investigating.
Chan-wook saw the pair’s interrogation as a kind of courtship. “The process of thoroughly investigating a person, getting to know them through one thing after another, is a sort of dating for them. The conversations they have – very dry and with many things hidden – are a sort of process of having closed-door conversations with dual meanings,” he told Jean Noh at ScreenDaily.
The director’s co-writer, Seo-kyeong Jeong, expands on this unique connection with Anthony D’Alessandro at Deadline. “The detective loves his work. When he’s investigating the crime scene, it’s as though he’s reading a love letter when he’s on the crime scene. He sees Seo-rae (Tang Wei), and it’s a kind of love. It’s a paramount importance for both the characters.”
The choice of Chinese actress Tang Wei, who doesn’t speak Korean, presented its own problems, but Chan-wook praises her work ethic. “The hardest thing about the shoot was her speaking Korean. When we were shooting, it would have taken too long until we got all the dialogue [perfect] so if her lips and speaking speed, the length of each syllable, were accurate, I would say, ‘Okay,’ and we did 99% of it in ADR.” He adds that they brought in outsiders to see if they could understand all the lines cold. “We recorded and refined. I want to compliment Tang Tang’s efforts. She never got tired or complained once.”
Mashable’s Kirsty Puchko is sure Chan-wook’s fans will love the film and recognize his stamp. “A pitch-black sense of humor lurks in the heart of Park Chan-wook’s latest thriller, Decision to Leave. This will come as no surprise to fans of the South Korean filmmaker, who makes tales of murder, incest, betrayal, and suicide attempts the stuff of twisted romance and even more twisted visual gags.
Park Hae-il as Detective Hae-jun in director Park Chan-wook’s “Decision to Leave.” Cr: Mubi
Meanwhile, Deadline’s D’Alessandro acknowledges the film’s distance from the auteur’s previous work, placing it closer to Tenet to a degree in its labyrinthine plotting. “Behold, the brilliance of Park Chan-wook when it comes to playing with timelines and details,” he exults.
Reviewer Guy Lodge from Film of the Week reminds us that we’ve seen this skewed policeman/suspect relationship before, but Decision to Leave still rises up. “Written down in such terms, Park’s first film in six years sounds frankly hackneyed, recycling a plot shopworn from such past iterations as Out of the Past, Body Heat and Basic Instinct. So why does this one feel so fresh, so slinky, so genuinely unpredictable even as we recognize the rules of the game?”
Lodge answers his own question. “Ornately and ingeniously plotted as it is, Decision to Leave is a wary, wounded love story first and a procedural puzzle second, powered by what seems a sincerely soulful attraction between two people who know nothing — but somehow see everything — of each other.”
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Bardo” is a personal odyssey through the mind of the Mexican auteur and, by extension, Mexican history.
October 7, 2022
She Stoops to Conquer: Gina Prince-Bythewood Goes to War in “The Woman King”
In a departure from her previous films, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s epic action-adventure “The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis as Nanisca, wrestles with historical complexity. Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Any new film by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, The Old Guard) will be greeted by excitement. The Woman King, which opened in the number-one spot, taking in $19 million in its first weekend, is obviously continuing a trend but represents a significant departure for the director.
The historical epic is set in the 1800s and focuses on the Agojie, an elite all-female warrior unit charged with protecting the African Kingdom of Dahomey from the 17th to the 19th century. The powerful depiction of the life and prowess of the Agojie warriors is matched by bravura performances of the nearly all Black and female cast, led by Viola Davis.
“As soon as I read the script [credited to Dana Stevens from a story by Stevens and Maria Bello], I knew in five pages that I had to do this movie,” Prince-Bythewood tells Farah Fleurima in The New York Times. It was just excitement, excitement, excitement, because the story was entrenched in truth and a specific war that happened at a specific time, then led to a bigger war against colonizers. The more I learned about them, the more I got excited about putting this incredible culture — and us — onscreen in a way that we haven’t been able to see ourselves.”
Davis, who also executive produced the project, plays General Nanisca, who is preparing a new group of young recruits and readying them for battle under the direction of King Ghezo (John Boyega).
Thuso Mbedu as Nawi in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Sony
“When I met with Viola and Cathy [Schulman, a producer] to get the job, I felt all my work until [that] point led me to be able to tell this story the right way and give it the epic scale it deserved, to do the action the right way, to showcase these women in the way they deserve to be showcased, given all the things I’ve learned, not only on The Old Guard with action but just in storytelling,” the director tells Fleurima. “Do you care about the characters? Do they feel real to you? That’s where every really good movie starts.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca and Lashana Lynch as Izogie in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
“The Woman King is the product of a thousand battles Davis, 57, and Prince-Bythewood, 53, have waged over the course of their careers, on subjects ranging from budgets to hairstyles,” agrees The Hollywood Reporter’s Rebecca Keegan. “Despite being the only African American actor to achieve the triple crown of acting — an Oscar (for Fences), an Emmy (for How to Get Away With Murder) and not one but two Tonys (Fences and King Hedley II) — Davis had not had the opportunity to play a physical, heroic role like this one. The Woman King is a $50 million action-adventure epic — think Braveheartwith Davis in the Mel Gibson role — a movie that somehow felt both inevitable and impossible for her and Prince-Bythewood to get to the screen.
Davis herself was pulled into the movie via an unconventional pitch, says Keegan.
“In 2015, Maria Bello traveled to the West African nation of Benin, formerly the Dahomey kingdom, and learned the story of the Agojie there. Bello came home to L.A. convinced there was a film in that history. She enlisted Schulman, then head of the organization Women in Film, to help her realize it.
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood, Lashana Lynch, and Thuso Mbedu on the set of “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
They wondered if it was possible to make an all-Black female action movie.
“This was before Marvel’s Black Panther, which fictionalizes the Agojie as the female warriors of the Dora Milaje, broke box office barriers in 2018, and before the Black Lives Matter movement sparked a new urgency in Hollywood’s sometimes halting efforts at inclusion,” Keegan continues. “In 2015, Bello used a moment when she was presenting Davis with an award at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles to tell the audience the story of the Agojie general and suggest that she’d like to see Davis play the role.”
“Instead of just presenting the award the way you normally would, she pitched the script, just this whole story,” Davis told Keegan. “And then when she finished it, everybody started cheering.” As Keegan writes, “Davis was in.”
Lashana Lynch as Izogie in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Physical preparation for the shoot was “punishing,” Keegan notes, with Prince-Bythewood joining the cast for much of it. Four months out from the shoot, cast members participated in weight training for 90 minutes a day, “followed by three-and-a-half hours of fight training with stunt coordinator Danny Hernandez, which included running, martial arts, and working with swords and spears.”
Pro boxer Claressa Shields served as a prototype of “focus, stance and strength” for Davis, who threw herself into her workouts and ultimately achieved a six-minute, 23-second mile on the treadmill during training. For Davis, the transformation was more than physical.
“I was a tough kid, I always wanted to kick somebody’s ass,” she told Keegan. “But as I grew into an adult, I embraced the narrative of the world about women. Which is, I’m feeling guilty that I don’t smile enough, I’m not soft enough, I’m not small enough, I’m too aggressive, everybody’s afraid of me. All these adjectives that I’ve been running from all my life that I feel de-feminize me. All of a sudden I had to call in all of those things that I threw into a wastebasket to create this Nanisca. And somewhere in the middle of that, it just happened: I felt badass. I felt proud, even, of my body, and not that it looked like anything that anybody else would find acceptable, but for me, it just was the house of my bravery.”
Sisipho Mbopa, Lone Motsomi, Lashana Lynch as Izogie, Viola Davis as Nanisca, and Shelia Atim as Amenza in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
(Second row L-R )
Sisipho Mbopa , Lone Motsomi ,Chioma Umeala
The shoot was to take place in South Africa over a period of five months, and in preparation Prince-Bythewood prioritized hiring women and people of color as department heads. The crew included cinematographer Polly Morgan, production designer Akin McKenzie, costume designer Gersha Phillips, visual effects supervisor Sara Bennett, editor Terilyn Shropshire, and South African makeup artist Babalwa Mtshiselwa.
“The thing is for women and people of color, often the résumés are not long because it’s about lack of opportunity, not lack of talent,” Prince-Bythewood said. “So when you’re in my position, it’s important to look past that résumé. There were a couple of people who’ve never done a film of this size before, but what they brought into that meeting, I knew that they were going to bring something extra.”
Prince-Bythewood wanted her cast, many of whom had been on sets where stylists didn’t know how to do their hair, to have input into their appearances. Hair stylist Louisa Anthony was tasked with creating “looks that were cool and functional in fight scenes, braids and short styles that her cast could move in.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca and John Boyega as King Ghezo in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
The director’s mandate to DP Morgan, she said, was “I want our women to look more beautiful than they’ve ever been shot before.”
“Viola, along with [producers] Julius Tennon and Cathy Schulman, fought so hard for this film, and part of it was fighting for her to have an opportunity to play a character like this, which she’s never been offered,” Prince-Bythewood tells Leslie Combemale at the Motion Picture Association’s The Credits. “Nothing has ever been written like this. She’s a genius and deserves all the choices, and the reality of our industry is that you don’t get them as a Black artist, so she created her own. It was really beautiful to build her character Nanisca with the back story that Viola created. That’s a movie in itself.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca and Thuso Mbedu as Nawi in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Prince-Bythewood was also inspired to work with Lashana Lynch, who plays the Agojie lieutenant Izogie in the film.
“I had seen the speech she gave at Essence Black Women in Hollywood, and that was also at the time when the trailers for No Time To Die had started coming out, and she just looked so badass,” the director tells Combemale. “It was what she said about the type of films she wanted to do and the type of work she wanted to put in the world. I was just so inspired and felt like I wanted to work with her. Then we met, and it was such an immediate connection. What we wanted to do with the character of Izogie is so specific, and I love the character on the page, but Lashana inspired me to give her more, not only in dialogue, humor, story, and backstory but also in action. She was one that Danny [Hernandez] and I, our fight and stunt coordinator, could trust implicitly. We knew if we designed it, she could do it.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca and John Boyega as King Ghezo in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Combemale senses “joy and ownership among those involved in this movie.” Prince-Bythewood agrees: “So many of us knew what we were doing was special because it was different, and we hadn’t seen it before. When you have collaborators like I had on this, all of whom were women and people of color, all my HODs, everyone brought such a level of passion to be able to tell the story, and everybody was empowered. They had a voice in rooms where they weren’t the only ones for the first time, amongst their own, and feeling valued. That brings out even more in people, and it was such an inspiring environment. When you believe, when it’s more than a job, you just get really great work out of people.”
Shelia Atim as Amenza in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Esther Zuckerman, interviewing the director for Rolling Stone, says making the movie also brought home some personal experiences for Prince-Bythewood.
“In the script, Nanisca bonds with a new recruit named Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), whose adoptive father gives her to the Agojie after she refuses to marry,” says Zuckerman. “Prince-Bythewood was adopted, and sought out a relationship with her birth mother, only to be left feeling slightly disappointed by the experience.”
Zuckerman relays how when Prince-Bythewood reached the point of her initial pitch to the producers and Davis, who’d been developing the project, she broke down in tears when describing her relationship to the storyline. But the director admits it’s what got her the job; Zuckerman says Davis was “sold [on] Gina’s pitch” after this episode.
Viola Davis as Nanisca, Shelia Atim as Amenza, Lashana Lynch as Izogie in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
“Everyone in the room knew she was the one to direct The Woman King, because she was going to protect and honor it the same way she would her own story,” says Davis.
As a former professional athlete who had also kickboxed for a couple of years, the director was able to use her experience to overcome her imposter syndrome when coaching Davis. “I know what you feel right before a fight,” Prince-Bythewood tells Zuckerman. “I know how Nanisca would have fought. She wouldn’t have shown emotion in her face. She wouldn’t show effort. Brutally efficient. So I could talk to [Davis] about that.”
Viola Davis and director Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
Writing at SlashFilm, Mike Schutt says The Old Guard showed Prince-Bythewood had an inherent knack for action geography. “It was a great place to build from, and boy howdy, did she build on it for The Woman King,” says Schutt. “Working on The Old Guard made her realize rehearsal was her friend.”
Extensive prep resulted in “every action sequence being rousing, brutal, and utterly thrilling,” Schutt notes.
“Every actor is in total command of their body, and you believe these are real warriors,” he adds. “Without proper rehearsal, The Woman King could look frenzied and hollow, and it couldn’t be further from those descriptors. Gina Prince-Bythewood learned how to be a great action filmmaker, and I want to see her canvases get even bigger.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Ilze Kitshoff/Sony
The movie isn’t just concerned with war and battles, there’s also a B-plot romance, points out Danielle Cohen for The Cut.
“I think the best love stories aren’t the main story,” the director tells Cohen. “It’s hard to sustain just two people in love. What I learned from the big, historical epics that influenced The Woman King was that it can’t just be two armies clashing and hacking at each other. What’s the story beneath that, and how do you follow it within the chaos? I knew I wanted The Woman King to be intimately epic, and I feel like all my work up to this point has led me to this. Having the level and depth of character from some of the smaller, more intimate stories I’ve told as I go into this bigger sandbox is really important. There are a number of different love stories within The Woman King that help make an audience feel and connect. I didn’t just want to show these women as badass killers. Let’s show their humanity, the fullness of their lives, the fact that their vulnerability is a strength in addition to the fact that they kill.”
Viola Davis as Nanisca and Thuso Mbedu as Nawi in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Sony
Although just released, The Women King is already engaged in its own online battles around the extent of Dahomey’s role in the slave trade.
Polygon’s Matt Patches was one of many to ask the director about the challenges inherent in approaching this subject in a historical context.
“Almost every society engaged in slavery in some respect, and the difference here, prior to Europeans coming — as in any other type of society, it was about prisoners of war,” Prince-Bythewood told Patches.
Lashana Lynch as Izogie and Thuso Mbedu Thuso Mbedu as Nawi in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Sony
“Never commerce — that’s what Europeans brought to it. But we also set this film specifically at the time where the kingdom was at a crossroads, and Ghezo was having to decide [whether to capture other Africans and sell them to European slavers]. Because it was literally — half the kingdom wanted to abolish their involvement, and the other half wanted to keep it, because it brought them wealth. So the Agojie and Nanisca represented that group that wanted to abolish it, and Ghezo had to make that decision. In America, certainly, [Black people are] taught that our existence in America begins with enslavement. We’re not taught that we came from so far beyond that. Having that knowledge going up can absolutely be a game-changer. So I’m hoping, foremost, you go and you’re entertained, and you have fun with the film, but you get to see yourself reflected in a way you never have, and change your mindset.”
Lashana Lynch as Izogie in director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.” Cr: Sony
Noel King on Vox’s Today, Explained podcast also approached the subject of truth, and of wrestling with the historical complexity.
“Historical epics are some of my favorite films,” Prince-Bythewood told King. “I’ve watched Braveheart a hundred times. I loved that film. Last of the Mohicans. Gladiator. These films that are set in a true time in history, and yet there is some inventiveness in terms of the characters and your ability to tell personal stories within that. So I knew going in the balance that I wanted to have, and the confidence in that and the excitement and being able to tell the story of this kingdom, like that’s an extra thing to know that these women were real, that this David and Goliath battle that they had was real, and the stakes were real, and the reasons for it were real, that this kingdom was real, that the politics and gender politics were real. I just kept getting more excited as I got deeper into the research because I saw more truth and more authenticity that I could pour into the story.”
“Moonage Daydream:” Making This Psychedelic and Very Cinematic Moment
From “Moonage Daydream.” Cr: NEON
Brett Morgen’s documentary feature Moonage Daydream, Bill Desowitz writes in IndieWire, is “a kaleidoscopic, mind-blowing journey about the chameleon of rock, built around David Bowie as narrator (culled from pre-existing material), performer, and philosopher about the transience of life and the promise of the new millennium.”
Describing what it is that Morgen has created is the first hurdle for the reviewer. New York Times culture reporter Melena Ryzik gamely tries, writing, “Morgen’s opus about Bowie is billed not as a traditional documentary but as an immersive experience. It’s equal parts psychedelic and philosophical — a corkscrew into Bowie’s carefully constructed personae, assembled entirely from archival footage and audio, some of it rare and never broadcast before.”
Esquire UK’s Alex Bilmes turns a fan’s eye to the new film. “Now comes something more daring, and cinematic, and still more successful: Moonage Daydream, an attempt to capture on film some of the otherworldly appeal of the extraordinary David Bowie,” he writes.
“Sanctioned by the Bowie estate, which apparently gave Morgen access to five million pieces of archived material, Moonage Daydream does not seek to be definitive, or exhaustive. It’s a meditation on Bowie’s brilliance, an immersion in his aesthetic, and a portrait of the artist as existentialist — a searching, compulsively creative spirit.”
With reviewers calling the documentary feature a psychedelic and immersive cinematic moment, Brett Morgen’s “Moonage Daydream” is the David Bowie tribute fans have been waiting for. Cr: NEON
“Moonage Daydream.” Cr: NEON
But the movie’s story can’t be told without Brett Morgen, the director and eventual super-fan. He told IndieWire’s Desowitz his goals for Moonage Daydream and described how they took form. “I was hoping to create a theme park ride [in IMAX] around my favorite musical artist, something that would be intimate and sublime and experiential,” Morgen recounts.
“But the film became something much deeper and richer, which I didn’t expect to encounter,” he adds, “because prior to starting the film, I only listened to David’s music — I hadn’t really listened to his interviews. So the film became more life affirming than I anticipated.”
Venerable critic Hilton Als, from The New Yorker, isn’t necessarily taken in by all the kaleidoscopic visuals: “Bowie gave a damn. But his love of the rogue spirit in others, his collaborative urges, his paternal instincts — all of it wrapped in his own particular freak flag — aren’t much in evidence in Brett Morgen’s new documentary, Moonage Daydream,which instead fills the screen with visual bombast.”
As an artist who tried to align himself with others who, “like him, had broken down the walls between “real” art and the pop world,” Bowie’s career was constantly full of evolution and experimentation, Als contends. Yet despite the use of fast cuts, “Moonage Daydream is strangely inert, with only occasional flashes of Bowie’s personality, his fascinating combination of British formality, eccentricity, and wit. Morgen’s daydream is that he’s the only person who truly gets Bowie, and foremost among the things he supposedly understands is how alienated Bowie was, as much by nature as by inclination.”
He quotes Ellen Willis, who questioned Bowie’s authenticity in a 1972 piece for The New Yorker. “Bowie doesn’t seem quite real,” she wrote. “Real to me, that is — which in rock and roll is the only fantasy that counts.” But Als argues that, actually, “Bowie’s reality was always there, hiding in plain sight. To my mind, it wasn’t coldness or alienation of the kind that seems to interest Morgen but a pervasive loneliness that was at the heart of so much of his music, and perhaps the reason that he kept reaching out to, or defending, all those other artists and listeners who knew more than a little about difference.”
In an interview for Filmmaker Magazine, Tiffany Pritchard sits down with Morgen to discuss his unconventional approach. “The first 20 minutes you are not supposed to understand [the film], it’s supposed to wash over you and be a mystery,” Morgen tells Pritchard. “Once you get past these 20 minutes, you can relax.”
Morgen, who says he’s never had interference from artists when it came to music and generally doesn’t work with a music supervisor, “had a bit of fun with the audience” for those first 20 minutes: “I call it a jukebox musical — the film starts with a playlist that, in my interpretation, included songs that relate to transience, chaos and fluidity. But really, I don’t know about music more than anyone else. These are simply music tracks from my playlists.”
So what inspired the filmmaker’s intimate montage of Bowie? “My number one rule for this film was ‘no facts and no learned information.’ The best way to experience Bowie is to not explain but to just succumb. And so the film was put together very spontaneously, with a lot of techniques that Bowie employed.
“I wanted to arrive at something different, totally experiential. We all have our own Bowie — I tried to make the film so that everyone can find their own Bowie.”
Carole Horst’s interview with Morgen for Variety had the director questioning why he had even attempted documenting an artist with an already-published cache of 27 books solely about him. But he dismissed them just as quickly. “…So if you want to know that stuff, you can go do that. But what can I offer that you can’t get from those books? That’s generally the first question as I approach it: What can I offer in this space of cinema?”
Morgen blew through his initial timeline of 68 weeks to complete Moonage Daydream, with the project eventually spanning five years, albeit with a pandemic stuck somewhere in the middle. He explained his evolving timeline to Horst. “After trawling through the material for two years, a through-line definitely emerged related to chaos and transience, and which was a little different than change. I think people think of change as the through line of David — you know, cha-cha-changes. But it’s more on a spiritual level, like transience,” he said.
“I spent a year working on the script, which [involved] collating his interviews into these sort of more philosophical endeavors and creating a playlists that would play out a little bit like a jukebox musical, so that the songs were all chosen for the way they captured him in those particular moments, but more importantly because they had some thread back to the through-line of the film about transience. So that’s how I kind of was able to weave the stitch the narrative together.”
AnOther’s Carmen Gray reports that, while sorting through the materials from Bowie’s estate, Morgen came to appreciate the star “as someone able to embrace change on a deeper, spiritual level, and navigate the anxiety and chaos of our times.”
Calling Bowie a “21st-century prophet,” Morgen imbues the artist with nearly mystical powers. “He was very attuned, and could hear things that we couldn’t hear, and see things that we couldn’t see,” he tells Gray.
“We are living in a digital world inundated with information, and Bowie was talking about this before there was the internet. And the issues that have risen to the forefront of mainstream culture finally after 50 years with gender fluidity, he was talking about 50 years ago.”
When he finally reached the estate, Morgen was faced with the fabled persona Bowie had crafted around himself. But this didn’t seem to faze the director, as Gray notes. “It’s critical not to be intimidated by either the subject or the amount of material,” Morgen said, describing the process as a “murder scene,” where some raw material naturally stands out, as if dye had been applied to reveal blood.
Regardless, the predicted 68-week production ended up taking five years. “The freedom to work until he feels truly done is essential to Morgen — something he learned the hard way,” Gray writes.
“I decided I would never under any circumstances do that again,” Morgen insists. “When a film comes out and isn’t ready, it becomes a product.”
Morgen described the challenges he encountered while making what he referred to as “The David Bowie Experience” in an interview with Tom White for Documentary Magazine following the UK premiere of Moonage Daydream at the Sheffield Doc/Fest.
Creating a structure for the theatrical cinematic experience he envisioned, as opposed to a more conventional, linear documentary, was particularly vexing to Morgen, as he recounted to White. His usual approach of applying “a very rigorous aesthetic” to his films well before entering the edit bay, wasn’t working.
“Every film I’ve done has been written before I’ve gone into the editing room, and the edits don’t deviate much from the scripts,” he said. But after reviewing footage for two solid years, “and telling my investors that I was going to do this crazy Laserium-like experience,” he sat down to write an experience only to find that he didn’t know how.
“I am very linear in my thinking,” Morgen explains. “Jane, Montage of Heck and The Kid Stays in the Picture are very much scripted like dramatic films, with cause-and-effect narratives and three acts.
“With Moonage Daydream, I struggled mightily for eight months. I had a tremendous amount of self-doubt. I had exhausted most of our budget by that point before I had started editing, just getting all of this material ingested. And I didn’t know how to do it.”
Initially, Morgen attempted to cut the first space scene that helps bookend the film. “It is like a template of what the film should be, but I didn’t know how to go anywhere from there,” he said. “I realized that the film was going to require more structure. And as I went through the materials, I was able to establish a throughline of action related to transience and transcendence, or some variation thereof.”
Channeling chaos and fragmentation as Bowie’s throughline allowed Morgen to connect many of the elements that helped define the iconic artist. “The cut-up process that he borrowed from William Burroughs is involved in that. One can argue that his belief in no absolutes and his ability to stay in the now, in the moment — I had falsely thought that David created these different characters that defined him, and as you notice in the film, it’s not about characters.
Morgen began to perceive Bowie’s life and career “as more like a series of movements, like Picasso—these periods where you would just see these dramatic shifts. Once I landed on this idea of transience as the through line, and it was not going to be biographical, per se, I was still stuck. I pulled a trick out of Bowie’s book, which is, Get out of your own environment.”
“Moonage Daydream.” Cr: NEON
With that in mind, Morgen traveled to Los Angeles by train, vowing that he wouldn’t return until he cracked the script. “Twenty-four hours later I had the script that the film is based on. And the way I arrived there was, I decided to play a game. And I said, OK, let’s pick three songs from each album that relate to these themes and see what that looks like. And I was like, Oh, wow, that could be the movie. And it covers the whole career. It doesn’t just lean towards the hits. And then it became a question of reorganizing and restructuring that playlist and using that as the foundational blueprint for the film. And that inherently was driving me towards a more linear path.”
Moonage Daydream, Morgen insists, was designed to be a film about the viewer, not David Bowie, “attempting to use the techniques that Bowie employed, and to make a film that’s more felt than learned.
“The idea was that it wasn’t so much about humanizing David but as inviting the audience, as one does with every film. To project themselves, project their own story. My hope was that people would be meditating on their own lives throughout the film. And they can leave the theater thinking about their lives, not David’s life. And the hope was that what he’s talking about would resonate with almost anyone, because it isn’t specific to the music industry or even to the creative process. This is about life. There are words of wisdom that emanate from David that are so applicable to enhancing our day-to-day living.”
Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman reviews the film in what seems to be a more matter-of-fact manner which, for the non-fan, is more helpful as a guide to whether you watch it or not. “Moonage Daydream is no hippie-dippy daydream,” he writes.
“Bowie narrates the film, with Morgen splicing together interview clips so that Bowie is basically ruminating on who and where he was at any given moment. He’s a magician who’s willing to reveal his tricks, and also a happy doomsday philosopher; describing the cultural fragmentation that set in during the ‘70s, he says he embraced the idea that ‘Everything is rubbish, and all rubbish is wonderful.’ ”
He continues, “That meshes nicely with Morgen’s filmmaking, which is a form of apocalyptic montage. It’s the school of pop-drenched free association that, yes, we think of as music video, but Morgen evokes the most dangerous and visionary landmarks of the form, like Natural Born Killers and Godard’s The Image Book and the 28-minute film that started it all — Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising.”
But what are we, as fans, meant to take away from the movie? Morgen had intentions for that, as he relayed to the audience at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. “I tried to design the film in a way that invites everyone to find their own Bowie,” he said. “The less you put out there the more you invite the audience to project their own ideas on it. In the film I try to do that by withholding biographical information. By just giving you broad strokes, it allows you to more closely identify with the material.”
Tim Lewis from The Guardian asked Morgen if he agreed with one fan’s response to the film, which had been posted on Twitter: “Drugs would be redundant. It’s mind-bending.”
Morgen responded, “I’m not sure I agree wholeheartedly with that statement, but I don’t want to be irresponsible. It’s a maximalist film, it’s definitely kaleidoscopic and it really embraces the idea of being a piece of immersive entertainment.”
But his inspiration for the project “was probably more my experiences at the planetarium [at Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles] seeing the Pink Floyd Laserium and going on those inside-theme-park rides at Disneyland than any specific movie,” he said, before adding, “But you know, I’ve been to Disneyland on acid and it’s kind of awesome, so…”
Mashable’s Kristy Puchko compares Moonage Daydream to the recent stream of popular “immersive” touring art installations. “You know the emerging trend of immersive art exhibits?” she asks. “The paintings of the likes of van Gogh and Klimt are re-imagined in a 3D space, perfect for Instagram selfies. Glittering and in motion, their long-ago brush strokes become interactive as they are projected across massive walls, surrounding the viewer in masterpieces come alive. This is what Morgen seems to strive for with Moonage Daydream, and I do admire his apparent ambition.”
Commenting on the film’s limited release in IMAX theaters, Puchko says, “The cosmic candy-colored treatments of Bowie’s archival footage is meant to be displayed massively, swirling before the audience as if to envelop them.
“The soundscape, crashing waves of Bowie’s interviews and music with a rat-a-tat-tat of sputtering gears might well intoxicate, urging you away from the concreteness of common bio docs in favor of something purposefully more ethereal and inexplicable.”
But as the film goes on, Puchko notes how Morgen steers towards “moody re-enactments, muddled montages, and a barrage of film clips, ranging from Nosferatu and The Wizard of Oz to Labyrinth. One might extrapolate that Morgen is connecting Bowie’s influences to the artist’s own works to illustrate a continuum of imagination and daring,” she says.
But let’s go back to Gleiberman, as his previous inclusion was a mere prelude to his ultimate fan-boy stance: “More than ever, our identities seem liquid, and David Bowie was the avatar of that. Yet in Moonage Daydream, the more you listen to and look at Bowie in all those different guises, the more you see just one man: not a chameleon but a searcher,” he enthuses. “The changes he went through as if he were surfing them are the changes that life puts all of us through. Life, says Moonage Daydream, is a lot like rock ‘n’ roll. It exists in the moment, and that moment will soon be destroyed. But it’s beautiful while it lasts.”
The Revolution Will Be Televised: Making the Immersive, Explosive “Athena”
From “Athena,” courtesy of Netflix
An explosive epic in more ways than one, Romain Gavras’s Netflix feature Athena is set in France in 2022 but draws on the tradition of Greek tragedy. It starts with a clamoring desire for revenge that ignites the titular Parisian housing project into a riot in the opening scenes of the film and builds into a vicious — and highly visceral — battle between brothers, between social classes, and between the police and the populace.
Dali Benssalah (No Time to Die, Les Sauvages), plays Abdel, a career soldier committed to serving France and very dedicated to his job, in contrast to his younger brother Karim (first-time actor Sami Slimane), who leads the revolt, and the eldest brother Moktar, a self-interested drug dealer played by Ouassini Embarek (Café de la plage).
“It’s a fictional story about a brotherly love that can push you to do extreme things,” explains Slimane. “Athena is a subtle film. Familial love isn’t something that can be controlled. And there are different ways to deal with it, especially when you’ve been separated as a family, and for brothers raised without a father. In the film, we were going in three different directions. My character is the one who sees red and wants revenge at all costs. Abdel my brother is coming back from the army, he has seen death and wants to calm everything down. Our brother [Moktar] only thinks about himself and protecting his business. In this story, everyone is in the wrong, and everyone is in the right at the same time.”
“Athena is the story of a fragmented sibling who is a huge liability. I wanted to be able to project myself into all the characters” says Gavras. “The merchant who thinks only of his interests like Moktar, a brother who wants to stop the fire like Abdel, and finally the one who wants to burn everything down, like Karim.”
Sami Slimane as Karim in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Kourtrajmeuf Kourtrajme/Netflix
This relationship of brotherly discord is set against the backdrop of Athena, a highly-pressured conglomeration of frustration and people crammed behind what often resembles fortifications — scenes in the trailer look like the siege of Troy. This was a deliberate move on the part of the filmmakers.
According to production designer Arnaud Roth, the production team researched housing projects in France that were going to be under construction, demolished, or destroyed.
Sami Slimane as Karim in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
The Parc aux lièvres housing project in the Évry-Courcouronnes banlieue, or suburb, of Paris, “was probably the only one that, given its geography and its structure, reminded us of a fortress,” recalls Roth. “The architecture seduced us; the further we went in, the more it became an obvious choice.
“We quickly reached an agreement with Romain Gavras and Matias Boucard, the cinematographer, that the success of the movie would depend on ‘invisible’ decoration,” Roth continues. “There were a certain number of feelings that we wanted to generate, starting with isolation. In order to emphasize this ‘fortress’ and siege element, we closed the esplanade. We created walls in places where there weren’t any, crenelations that we particularly see during the riot police attack. In that way, we accurately and subtly conveyed our messages and responses.”
Run and Gun
The opening dozen minutes of the film consist of a mind-blowing single take: “a tour de force that lands with the impact of a shotgun blast to the chest,” says Nick Schager in his review for The Daily Beast.
“Gavras pans across the throngs of journalists to fixate on Abdel’s live-wire sibling Karim, who tosses a Molotov cocktail into the police station and, in doing so, lights the fuse of a city primed to detonate,” Schager reports. “Detonate it most certainly does, and Athena immediately dives headfirst into the resultant pandemonium… [the] camera bobs and weaves, paces and races, glides and soars with a dexterity that’s nothing short of astonishing. Entering, exiting and crossing physical spaces with seemingly impossible fluidity, it’s an introductory salvo of ingenuity and urgency.”
“The one-take is an oft-overused gimmick, but Gavras and cinematographer Matias Boucard create such dynamism with their swooping, chasing camera, it’s hard to believe the acrobatics in the frame remain so coherent and exciting,” says John Bleasdale in a review for the BFI’s Sight and Sound. “Gavras knows when to cut and when to allow a moment to breathe. Some of his images — with fireworks fired at the police and teargas engulfing the scene — are sublimely, disturbingly beautiful: Delacroix for the Snapchat age. GENER8ION’s soundtrack, when it barges through the sound of explosions, escalates the tension further.”
Rolling Stone’s David Fear says this first sequence is key to everything that the Franco-Greek filmmaker is trying to accomplish.
“It’s spectacular and quite a feat, for sure. More importantly, it immerses you in the action, gives you an incredible sense of place and an even better sense of the stakes, and by letting it unfold in real time, reminds you how it just takes a spark or two to quickly turn into an inferno,” says Fear. “A colleague has referred to this as ‘Fury Roadin the Hood’ and given the woozy mix of adrenaline rush and white-hot social commentary that the film traffics in, the comparison tracks. Athena does not want to inspire an uprising. It is an uprising.”
“It’s a very immersive film,” Gavras agrees. “These first few minutes represent above all a desire to stage all the grandeur of an ancient tragedy… but in a contemporary setting. They serve as a starting point for this opera in the ‘somewhat disadvantaged’ projects, which could just as easily be set in many places around the world. “Athena is a film which, like a certain kind of reality, remains quite violent, and this choice was crucial, to show how a display of violence, justified or not, is merely a means to a greater end.”
You’ll notice that Gavras (Our Day Will Come, The World Is Yours) refers to his third film as an opera — indeed it has a choral accompaniment in the form of the chants of the rioters/defenders. He sees it as a “choreographed piece that moves rapidly toward chaos, with neither villains nor good guys, but a chorus of characters heading inexorably toward tragedy, driven by their destiny and the trap that has been set for them.”
“We called it Athena just because we wanted to pull the thread of Greek tragedy, and of course, Athena is the goddess of war and wisdom,” Gavras tells Patrick Brzeski at The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not a real neighborhood, and it’s not based on a real story. It was based on a lot of stories. This riot hasn’t happened yet, but it’s almost like it’s the riot that could happen.
“There’s a lot of tension everywhere in the world… and we feel like everyone’s kind of pushing towards that,” Gavras continues. “And we know from history that civil wars are the worst thing that can happen to society. It’s something that men in my family have known — it’s like grandfather against grandfather; cousin against cousin. It’s the worst because it’s within the family. This is why we took the intimacy of a family getting torn apart, where their torment spills across the neighborhood and then across the country.”
Sami Slimane as Karim in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
The Camera at War
“This is not just a skirmish. Athena is fully a war movie recognized by both the filmmakers and the characters,” The Playlist’s Marshall Shaffer tells us. “With time and the intensification of the battle, the merits of Gavras’ scenario-first approach emerge. He does not need to establish character as the nature of war inevitably reveals it. Each brother’s response to the dizzying pace of events unfolding proves a source of endless fascination within Athena. These men cannot just be easy stand-ins for ideologies. To fit in with the feel of the film, they must be flesh-and-blood people who respond unpredictably and erratically to battlefield happenings.”
Fittingly, Gavras draws on cinematic themes of warfare and siege, with influences such as Kurosawa’s Ran, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott. The epic scale of these films is mirrored in the use of IMAX format for Athena, with cinematographer Matias Boucard shooting on the “last available IMAX at that time in the world.”
“IMAX is for large spaces and using it enabled us to get out of that projects, hip-hop, urban side of the movie,” recalls Boucard. “The camera is admittedly heavy, but it brings space and life to the footage.
Ouassini Embarek as Moktar in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
“The camera really helped us to make both simple and dramatic movements at the same time. We shot it like a movie that could have been made 30 years ago and which will be able to be made in 50 years. The riot police attack scene illustrates this wonderfully: we brought the biggest crane in Europe from the Czech Republic; it was more than 35 meters tall. Then we put it on a lorry that normally transported giant combine-harvesters and drove it in reverse in the middle of 250 extras! If we’ve gone to all this trouble, it’s to create a type of timelessness.”
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody points out that Gavras also had drones at his disposal. “They enable the camera to zip through space in ways that dazzle — for an instant — until continued use of the obvious technique yields merely a shrug,” he says. “Gavras’s elaborate methods in Athena — which involve the grand staging of interconnected events with a huge cast over large spaces — attempt to unite the panoramic and the intimate, the personal and the public, in ways that don’t do any of these elements justice.”
Sami Slimane as Karim and Dali Benssalah as Abdel in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri examines how Boucard’s camera work was essential to understanding the characters and storyline in what he calls “the year’s wildest movie opening.”
In the first few shots of the pivotal car crash sequence, “as Abdel asks for calm, the camera pans to the crowd watching him, then moves toward Karim (Sami Slimane), Abdel’s younger brother.” Ebiri notes how “it was crucial that the audience’s attention be immediately drawn to Karim. Thus, when the camera glides from Abdel to his brother, the focus changes immediately to ensure that our eyes land on Karim, even though at that point he’s just another face in the crowd.”
The camera makes both the physical and emotional distance between the two brothers immediately apparent. “We go from one brother to the other, but we also needed the distance between them,” Boucard explained to Ebiri.
Each character, as Ebiri observes, is shot differently. “The camera focuses intently on Karim whenever he’s onscreen and tracks smoothly along with him, conveying his total control over his surroundings,” he writes. “For Abdel, however, who is desperate to quell the uprising and talk sense into his brother, the camera is far less steady, often roaming around him as if replicating his anxiety and confusion.”
Anthony Bajon as Jérôme in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
Gavras acknowledges that “an extremely long, unbroken sequence that moves from location to location and plunges in and out of scenes of crazy violence is rarely filmed as one actual shot but rather stitched together out of shorter elements,” as Ebiri points out, but “a magician’s not going to tell his tricks,” he says.
Still, “such cuts tend to come during fast pans or instances when a large figure (such as a passing actor or a column) briefly enters the frame and obscures some of the action,” Ebiri theorizes. “Often the deception is required for safety.”
This is why the car ramming into the station doors was ultimately achieved in layers, as Boucard explained. “The camera movement was perfectly repeated first with the actors, then with the car, and the two resulting shots placed on top of each other during editing,” Ebiri summarizes. “The effect works so well because it’s a slightly blurry background action and doesn’t draw attention to itself — we’re still watching the actors.”
In an interview with Sam Moore at The Quierus, Gavras gives more insight to the explosive opening sequence: “There’s no CGI in the film, the crowd is real, the fireworks are real, everything is done mechanically,” he says. “For example, in that scene, we go from outside the van with the camera on the motorcycle, passing it inside the van, so the idea was to do everything very practically.”
Visually, Gavras says, his work is inspired by things “from paintings to Kurosawa to Apocalypse Now. What I liked in Apocalypse Now is that it is about the Vietnam War but it’s bigger than just Vietnam, Coppola made it timeless and we had a lot of references to that,” he says. “Back in the day they did it with cranes, and we wanted to make it like this with no green screen.”
But without the use of CGI or green screen, how did the filmmakers choreograph the violence and chaos of the film’s opening sequence, which appears to unspool in a single unbroken shot?
Speaking with CNN’s Thomas Page, Gavras explained, “We rehearsed the whole film for almost two months, like you’d rehearse a play or an opera, with a small camera, the main actors pretending there were fireworks and extras around them, to see the dance between the camera and the actors and the rhythm… The planning, weirdly, was almost military and very precise to create chaos in front of the camera.”
As a safety measure, Netflix provided additional security on set during production, Gavras recounts, “a team making sure we were not doing insane stuff,” as he puts it. “First, they want you to shoot everything green screen because it’s the way people do it, but I feel you lose a lot when you do this,” he says. “My 13-year-old daughter, she sees CGI everywhere, she’s like, ‘fake fire,’ ‘green screen.’ It’s not precise but it’s a feeling you have. And I don’t think you have it in this film.”
Gavras had decided to build Athena around a series of long takes “quite early on,” he told Page. “Tragedy starts with sunup and finishes with sunup. Twenty-four hours for a film is almost a real-time experience. We wanted to be within that real-time experience. Those long takes do that because you don’t jump in time.”
But without the use of CGI or green screen, how did the filmmakers choreograph the violence and chaos of the film’s opening sequence, which appears to unspool in a single unbroken shot?
Speaking with CNN’s Thomas Page, Gavras explained, “We rehearsed the whole film for almost two months, like you’d rehearse a play or an opera, with a small camera, the main actors pretending there were fireworks and extras around them, to see the dance between the camera and the actors and the rhythm… The planning, weirdly, was almost military and very precise to create chaos in front of the camera.”
As a safety measure, Netflix provided additional security on set during production, Gavras recounts, “a team making sure we were not doing insane stuff,” as he puts it. “First, they want you to shoot everything green screen because it’s the way people do it, but I feel you lose a lot when you do this,” he says. “My 13-year-old daughter, she sees CGI everywhere, she’s like, ‘fake fire,’ ‘green screen.’ It’s not precise but it’s a feeling you have. And I don’t think you have it in this film.”
Gavras had decided to build Athena around a series of long takes “quite early on,” he told Page. “Tragedy starts with sunup and finishes with sunup. Twenty-four hours for a film is almost a real-time experience. We wanted to be within that real-time experience. Those long takes do that because you don’t jump in time.”
Gavras tells Elena Lazic at Cineuropa that writing the film with Ladj Ly (Les Misérables, 2019) and Elias Belkeddar was a very smooth process. “We all really got into it during the first few months of COVID,” recalls Gavras. “Strangely, when you think the world is going to end or you don’t know what will happen, you can write a very ambitious film like that because you tell yourself that it might never get made, and you’ll never really have to shoot all of these one-take sequences. It’s easy to write, on paper, ‘We start there, and we end there.’ We wrote it without the constraint of feasibility — except that later, the feature was greenlit, and we had to shoot it. I had fewer white hairs before this film.”
Gavras is clear that without Netflix the movie would not have been made. “I must say that the collaboration was quite extraordinary, in the sense that they let me make the film that I wanted, which would not necessarily have been the case with a traditional producer,” he tells Lazic. “But obviously, as a director, I want people to see it on the big screen, which the media timeline in France does not allow. It’s a system that I think needs to change. But the film will exist on the big screen: it will do a week in New York, a week in London. It is also a picture that actually works well on TV, and there’s also the pleasure of knowing that the whole world will be able to see it on the same day. There are pros and there are cons, but the reality is that I couldn’t have made this movie without Netflix.”
Sami Slimane as Karim in director Romain Gavras’s “Athena.” Cr: Netflix
With Athena, Gavras and his co-writers wanted to create “a spark that will set the nation ablaze first-hand, starting with the personal story of a sibling whose pain and violence will spill over into the projects, and off-screen on the country.
“Very quickly, we wanted to elevate the form of the story, not treat it as a documentary or a social reality, but to make this story feel timeless and symbolic through the use of images,” he adds. “Athena could have taken place at any time in the past or the future. Behind every war hides a manipulation; an original lie. History repeats itself, from the Trojan War to contemporary wars. There are always forces in the shadows that feed the conflict.”
Get Ready for the Experiential Vibe of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Immersive and Visually Stunning “Bardo”
By Jennifer Wolfe
Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new feature, “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” stars Daniel GimÈnez Cacho as Silverio Gama, a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles who is compelled to return to his native country. Cr: Netflix/Limbo Films/S. De R.L. de C.V.
Much like the explosive, immersive experientiality Romain Gavras’s Athena provides, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is a visually stunning and immersive experiential epic from the master of some of cinema’s most immersive and experiential films himself, Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Babel, Birdman, Biutiful,The Revenant).
The latest project from the multi-Academy Award-winning director, Bardo will debut on Netflix on December 16, preceded by a theatrical release in Mexico on October 27 before rolling out for global expansion on November 18. Written by Iñárritu and Nicolás Giacobone (Birdman, Biutiful) and shot on glorious 65mm film by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Darius Khondji (Amour, Se7en), the film features production design by Oscar-winning Mexican designer Eugenio Caballero (ROMA, Pan’s Labyrinth) and costume design by Anna Terrazas (The Deuce, ROMA).
Bardo follows the intimate and moving journey of Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. After being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, Silverio is compelled to return to his native country unaware that this simple trip will push him to an existential limit. Along the way, he faces universal questions about identity, success, and morality, as well as the history of Mexico and the bonds he shares with his family.
In the film’s production notes, Iñárritu shares his inspiration for the project. “My family and I left Mexico City and came to California 21 years ago. Leaving your country behind comes with hopes and plans for the future but inevitably also with uncertainty, contradictions, and paradoxes.”
Bardo will be Iñárritu’s first film shot in his native Mexico since 2000’s Amores Perros. “Mexico, more than a country, is a state of mind,” the director says. “Actually, every home country is; a place where lots of stories and narratives are being endlessly told that strengthen our identity and sense of belonging while giving us collective power.”
What happens when we spend time away from this home then? “Memory lacks truth. It only possesses emotional conviction.”
Iñárritu references the Buddhism state of bardo — “the space between. A place where things die, come to life again, and are transformed into a state of perpetual uncertainty… [Silverio] eventually realizes that reality is pure fiction, so it is through fiction that he attempts to find the truth.”
But, as Iñárritu warns, he hasn’t found any absolute truths. “Only a journey between reality and imagination. A dream. Dreams do not possess time. Neither does cinema. Dreams, as cinema, are real but not truthful. In both, time is liquid. Bardo is the chronicle of the journey I went through between those two illusions whose borders are indecipherable for me.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
“Bad Travelling:” Blur and David Fincher Rewrite the Rules for Animation
Grotesque and dark visuals were just the start for “Bad Travelling,” director David Fincher’s first foray into animation with Blur Studio for Netflix’s animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
To work with director David Fincher is to adhere to what might seem to be a set of restrictive practices. In Mindhunter, for instance, DP Erik Messerschmidt commented on why a shot bible was so important. “With the exception of two shots in Episode 10, we didn’t use any handheld or Steadicam,” he said. Most of the drama in Mindhunter comes from the characters’ experiences in very long and complex interview scenes. “The content of those scenes is extremely measured and nuanced and I think a moving or shaking camera would have been a very distracting way to tell such a complex story.”
In the “Bad Travelling” episode of Netflix’s Love Death & Robots: Volume 3, making his first foray into animation wasn’t going to stop the famed director from keeping his options open. Animation studio Blur had previously worked with Fincher on the Netflix series Mindhunter and Sony’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Blur Studio’s co-CG supervisor, Jean-Baptiste Cambier, saw the opportunity to help him flourish in a new medium.
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
“Some aspects of an animation pipeline offered him a new vision of his own work, too,” Cambier says in an interview with Henry Winchester for the Chaos Group blog. “For instance, during his work with the layout team, led by Aaron Weldon, at the early stages, some cameras were set up in order to see the whole action from above in an almost orthographic view.”
This allowed Fincher and the artists to set up the action as a whole before determining the camera angles. Another obvious point was to be able to refine a performance to get the most out of the story.
Here, “Love, Death & Robots” Supervising Creative Director Jerome Denjean breaks down some of the episodes in series three.
To give the director some creative space to exercise his famed intuition in developing the look of “Bad Travelling,” Blur ended up lighting and crafting a few key shots and running all of that specific sequence — even if they had a large number of shots in them.
“By rendering sequences this way at an early stage, we sometimes got a more spontaneous result, and the shots didn’t look overworked, or we found lighting setups we would not have otherwise got. This was part of our way to regain something more instinctive and natural in our lighting approach.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
In his previous films and streaming shows, Fincher was known to keep color palettes to a specific set of tones. In Mindhunter, for instance, the period drama is full of yellow, cyan, brown, and avocado green. However, when it came to final grading, there wasn’t much of a cast or a skewing of the color. “His way of working was always this almost old-fashioned sense of engaging with the actors, dolly grip and camera operator to execute the shot,” Messerschmidt commented. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
Cambier explained how they created an initial look for “Bad Travelling” before look discussions started with Fincher. “Early on, the look-dev process starts with our art director Alexey Andreev. His first steps are to gather an initial deck of references from various places: movies, paintings, and concepts. Then he proceeds to paint directly on some keyframes of our layout.
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
“The story is dark, our characters are under constant pressure, and we wanted to embrace the story with the mood.”
The team mostly referenced films that embraced darkness and horror. They also referenced the strong use of practical lights, so they spent a lot of time digging into films such as The Witch, Funny Games, No Country for Old Men, The Revenant, and The Black Stallion. “Our art director also took cues from paintings by Rembrandt and Ilya Repin because of the interesting and unique ways lighting shaped their faces and bodies. There was a lot of that in our show,” Cambier said.
The team started with a still frame of the whole crew standing on the deck of the boat. “From this starting point, we threw in a lot of versions of the same frame under different lighting scenarios and colors. We then got to meet Fincher and showed him that contact sheet. He loved it, and it triggered a very long discussion about what the show should be.”
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
But to further develop the look, Fincher wanted the lighting to tell the story as much as any other tool at the production’s disposal.
Winchester also spoke with Blur Studio compositing supervisor Nitant Ashok Karnik, who described how they had to leave their comfort zones to use lighting to support the story. “Fincher did not shy away from brave choices with lighting. In the tempest scene, he asked us to push the intensity of the lightning flashes — to break some OLED screens with how bright it is,” he said.
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
“As an artist, that tells me that I don’t need to be afraid to blow out the image as long as we can read the action. It was liberating to be bold with lighting in this way. I would encourage others to be more ugly and real, than pretty and fake.”
Fincher would also push the team to alter some familiar and perhaps clichéd lighting scenarios. Karnik explains how, “at one point, Fincher mentioned wanting this sunset to feel like the ugliest sunset ever. That’s not something you hear often, but we had some fun with that one since it was the antithesis of every beautiful and romantic sunset you’ve seen.”
Director David Fincher’s “Bad Travelling” from the animated anthology series, “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.” Cr: Netflix
There was also a discussion with Fincher about dimming the light even more, and how the lighting tools in Chaos Group’s V-Ray helped him embrace the darkness. “I also told Fincher that one of the key processes of comping a shot is to turn all the lights off, and progressively turn them back on one by one, tweaking them as we go,” Cambier comments.
In fact, Cambier invited Fincher to look at a particular sequence without the key light. The removal of the light would make the shots darker with faces falling into shadow. “It really brought another dimension to the action. Fincher was all for it, and we constructed the sequence together based on this darker lighting scenario.”
Watch This: “The Crow” Beautifully Employs Text-to-Video Generation
Computer artist Glenn Marshall’s AI-driven short film “The Crow” paves the way for a future where entire feature films are produced by text-to-video systems. Cr: Glenn Marshall
Sooner or later an AI, or several of them, is going to make an entire narrative film from script to screen. A step closer to that inevitable day has been provided by computer artist Glenn Marshall.
Marshall’s works are entirely created through programming and code art. In 2008 he won the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica for a music video he created for Peter Gabriel — unique in that it was created entirely out of programming and algorithms. He also created an AI-generated Daft Punk video.
The Crow is a finalist for The Lumen Prize, considered to be two of the most prestigious digital arts awards in the world, and is also eligible for submission to the BAFTA Awards.
Computer artist Glenn Marshall’s AI-driven short film “The Crow”
“I had been heavily getting into the idea of AI style transfer using video footage as a source,” Marshall told The Next Web. “So every day I would be looking for something on YouTube or stock video sites, and trying to make an interesting video by abstracting it or transforming it into something different using my techniques.
“It was during this time I discovered Painted on YouTube — a short live-action dance film — which would become the basis of The Crow.”
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Marshall fed the video frames of Painted to CLIP, a neural network created by OpenAI.
He then prompted the system to generate a video of “a painting of a crow in a desolate landscape.”
Marshall says the outputs required little cherry-picking. He attributes this to the similarity between the prompt and underlying video, which depicts a dancer in a black shawl mimicking the movements of a crow.
Although 'video styling' is nothing new in the AI world, it's beginning to creep into the mainstream. I think 'The Crow' is playing its part. I'm getting accelerated interest from high profile bloggers, journalists and TV stations,citing it as a glimpse into the future of cinema. pic.twitter.com/gYwJkJDCyC
“It’s this that makes the film work so well, as the AI is trying to make every live action frame look like a painting with a crow in it. I’m meeting it half way, and the film becomes kind of a battle between the human and the AI — with all the suggestive symbolism.”
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Cr: Glenn Marshall
Marshall says he’s exploring CLIP-guided video generation, which can add detailed text-based directions, such as specific camera movements.
That could lead to entire feature films produced by text-to-video systems. Yet Marshall believes even his current techniques could attract mainstream recognition.
Deep learning is not coming to Hollywood. It is already here.
See for yourself in the video below:
https://youtu.be/5dvxY6vXHsA
https://youtu.be/pK7AGfBtw1Q
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
The latest season of Star Trek: Discovery boldly goes where no previous Star Trek series has gone before.
For the fourth season of the Paramount franchise, the producers turned to virtual production. VFX house Pixomondo (PXO) has even nicknamed it virtual production stage in Toronto the “Holodeck.”
Anthony Rapp as Lieutenant Paul Stamets in episode 5 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham and Anthony Rapp as Lieutenant Paul Stamets in episode 5 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in episode 4 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca in episode 4 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
The stage includes an LED wall outfitted with 2,000 panels, with another 750 panels on the ceiling, and measures 72 x 85 x 24 feet. More than 60 OptiTrack cameras surround the stage to provide tracking, and it’s all run by over 40 high-end GPUs running Unreal Engine’s nDisplay to synchronize the 2,750+ panels.
Nearly every episode of the 13-part season has at least one scene shot against the AR wall, details a production case study on the Unreal Engine site. Environments range from familiar locations like the Discovery shuttle bay to fantastic locations like the Kaminar Council Chamber, located deep underwater.
Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca and Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd in episode 5 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Doug Jones as Lieutenant Saru and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in episode 5 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in episode 6 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca and Shazad Latif as Lieutenant Ash Tyler in episode 6 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Watch this: PXO’s work on “Star Trek: Discovery”
To create each new environment for the AR wall, the process begins in pre-production, with PXO’s virtual art department creating prototypes for each environment. To quickly create a rough representation for blocking, the team sources elements from the Epic Games Marketplace, adapts them as needed, and adds them to the scene. All the assets were created in Unreal Engine.
“Using a procedural approach directly in Unreal Engine ended up being the better approach,” said VFX supervisor and PXO head of studio Mahmoud Rahnama. “Not only did this allow for much higher-resolution assets in UE, it yielded similar results to our offline render, but also dramatically reduced our average offline render time.”
Cr: Paramount+
Rahnama says PXO was able to totally abandon its offline rendering approach to cleanup work, one of the most thankless — but necessary — parts of any VFX artist’s job. That also created a domino effect, freeing up other groups across the board.
“It’s great being able to focus the team’s attention on the shots they feel excited to work on rather than some of the more mundane work. That is one of the many creative benefits for artists working in virtual production.”
Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham, Anthony Rapp as Lieutenant Paul Stamets, Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, and Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca in episode 7 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Doug Jones as Lieutenant Saru, and Sara Mitich as Airiam in episode 7 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Shazad Latif as Lieutenant Ash Tyler, Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham, and Doug Jones as Lieutenant Saru in episode 8 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Shazad Latif as Lieutenant Ash Tyler and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in episode 8 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
The lighting team especially saw a major shift. During the first season of Discovery it could take up to 14 hours for a lighting bake to finish. Using Unreal Engine’s GPU Lightmass Baker, high-quality bakes can be done in as little as 30 minutes.
One of the biggest changes, however, is somewhat intangible. In previous seasons, each location would be divided into multiple tiles, and individual tiles would then be assigned to an artist. Once the tiles were complete, they were reviewed independently and the complete environment was only assembled for the final batch of reviews.
Kenneth Mitchell as Kol in episode 9 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in episode 9 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Michael Gibson /Paramount+
Doug Jones as Saru and Mary Wiseman as Cadet Sylvia Tilly in episode 11 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg /Paramount+
Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham in episode 11 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca in episode 12 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg /Paramount+
During Season 4, PXO’s artists could all work in the same scene simultaneously. That not only led to a more cohesive and consistent environment, it also enabled artists to collaborate and inspire one another. Plus, as an added bonus, according to Rahnama, “when artists know people will see their work on a daily basis, it tends to significantly improve organization.
“Right now, the speed at which you can shoot a sequence and cut it together with 80% of the shots completed and not have to wait months to see final VFX is a game changer. Soon, it’s going to be a standard way to get everything out the door, and onto people’s screens, even faster.”
Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou in episode 12 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg /Paramount+
Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham in episode 13 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg /Paramount+
Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca in episode 13 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg /Paramount+
Anthony Rapp as Lieutenant Paul Stamets, Doug Jones as Saru, Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham, James Frain as Ambassador Sarek, and Jayne Brook as Admiral Cornwell in episode 14 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Jan Thijs /Paramount+
Oyin Oladejo as Lieutenant Junior Grade Joann Owosekun, Doug Jones as Saru, Jayne Brook as Admiral Cornwell, and Emily Coutts as Lieutenant Keyla Detmer in episode 14 of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Cr: Russ Martin/Paramount+
A number of new shows are using VP as the basis for production. Among them Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (see below) and Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon for HBO.
The Holodeck a PXO can’t conjure a Klingon bat’leth out of thin air just yet, but give it time.
A Brief Voyage Through the History of Virtual Production
From season 3 of “The Mandalorian.” Cr: Lucasfilm and Disney+
While virtual production is definitely having a “moment” in Hollywood and beyond, VP technologies and techniques have by no means just appeared overnight, cinematographer Neil Oseman observes in a recent blog post. The use of LED walls and LED volumes — a major component of virtual production — can be traced directly back to the front- and rear-projection techniques common throughout much of the 20th century, he notes.
Oseman takes readers on a trip through the history of virtual production from its roots in mid-20th century films like North by Northwest to cutting-edge shows like Disney’s streaming hit, The Mandalorian. Along the way, he revisits the “LED Box” director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki conceived for 2013’s VFX Academy Award-winner Gravity, the hybrid green screen/LED screen setups used to capture driving sequences for Netflix’s House of Cards, and the high-resolution projectors employed by DP Claudio Miranda on the 2013 sci-fi feature Oblivion. Oseman also includes films like Deepwater Horizon (2016), which employed a 42×24-foot video wall comprising more than 250 LED panels, Korean zombie feature Train to Busan (2016), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), as well as The Jungle Book (2016) and The Lion King (2018), before touching on more recent productions like 2020’s The Midnight Sky, 2022’s The Batman and Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
NAB Show New York is introducing the Cine Live Lab, a new destination on the show floor featuring daily, hands-on demonstrations of the latest tools and techniques in cinematic storytelling and live broadcast production. Presented in partnership with AbelCine, the Cine Live Lab is open to all NAB Show New York badge holders and will take place October 19-20 at the Javits Center.
Designed to highlight the synergies between cinematic and broadcast style production, the Cine Live Lab will feature three premier sessions from AbelCine. Presentation topics include managing cinematic multi-cam projects, audience experience goals, identifying production team member roles, as well as equipment and skillsets required of crews.
Additional sessions will teach techniques in camera operations needed to get the best shot, from lensing and focus to set up and framing. Leading companies driving advancements in content creation and cinema will demonstrate their wares. Supporting partners also include Sony, Fujinon, Reidel and Multidyne.
“We are in a transformative time in which cinematic storytelling tools and techniques are being applied to live performance and broadcast productions. The approach that is emerging on these projects is a combination of cinema and broadcast production talent and disciplines. We are pleased to present Cine Live Lab to foster these discussions and bring the creative community together,” said Pete Abel, co-founder and CEO, AbelCine.
“We are excited to offer this dedicated area of the show floor exclusively at NAB Show New York for the cine and broadcasting community to gain exposure and hands-on experience with the latest equipment transforming production and post workflows,” said Chris Brown, executive vice president and managing director of Global Connections and Events at NAB.
The Cine Consortium launched in November 2021 in Los Angeles to help NAB Show and its affiliated events identify opportunities, such as the Cine Live Lab, that serve to educate and unite the cinema, production, post and broader content creation communities. Members include studios, guilds, societies, and technologists.
Want more? In the video below, learn how Pixomondo used Unreal Engine’s virtual production tools alongside a massive AR wall to create the unique environments for Star Trek: Discovery:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Inside the (Literally) Action-Packed Virtual Production for Sky Studios’ “The Rising”
Sky Studios’ supernatural crime thriller “The Rising,” starring Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly, employed ARRI Stage London’s automation and playback systems for virtual production. Cr: Sky Studios
James Franklin, virtual production supervisor at Sky Studios — Sky’s original programming arm — explains how supernatural crime thriller The Rising took advantage of ARRI Stage London’s automation and playback systems.
Although the Sky Original series had initially decided on virtual production for safety considerations, shooting in an LED volume enabled the production team to push their creative storytelling further, even within a tight timetable.
“Motocross features heavily within the storyline. The lead character, Neve Kelly (Clara Rugaard), rides along country roads at night or alongside her father’s car, and even takes part in a fast-paced track race,” Franklin explains. “Ed Lilly directed these scenes and wanted tight close-ups to capture the drama and emotions throughout, so even with stunt training, we decided it would be too dangerous to try and shoot on location.”
Sky Studios utilized virtual production techniques to shoot motocross action scenes for “The Rising” at ARRI Stage London. Cr: Creative Technology/Will Case
Production took place at ARRI Stage London in Uxbridge, a 708-square-meter mixed reality facility developed in partnership with Creative Technology. The team had seven different setups to complete in just 11 hours. “It was certainly a massive challenge, but the thoughtful design and engineering of ARRI Stage London meant we could move swiftly between scenes by taking advantage of the stage automation and playback systems,” Franklin continues.
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Solly McLeod as Joseph Wyatt and Clara Rugaard in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
“We had to plan out the shots meticulously to suit the talent’s schedules and maximize the shoot day. The benefit of a virtual production environment is that you can reset in a matter of moments and be ready to go again with exactly the same lighting conditions and continuity.”
2D plates pre-shot on location were uploaded to the facility’s LED wraparound walls and ceiling to provide a photorealistic backdrop. These were complemented with professional lighting fixtures from ARRI, including SkyPanels and Orbiters to provide authentic skin tones and highlights.
To create the dynamic and intense atmosphere needed for the nighttime road scenes, director of photography Dale Elena McCready, BSC employed a dolly that could be pushed right up to the bike. For the race scenes, the team also used a body-mounted suspension rig, which created a shaking and juddering feel as the bikes sped over bumps and other obstacles in the course.
The design and engineering of ARRI Stage London allowed the production team for “The Rising” to move swiftly between scene setups for maximum efficiency. Cr: Creative Technology/Will Case
“It was a fantastic combination. Clara could react to the riders and action happening all around her, and Dale could put her front and center of the shot, capturing every little flicker of emotion and creating something very visceral and almost intimate within an action scene,” Franklin recounts. “There’s just no way that you could get those types of shot with a moving bike, let alone several all vying for pole position on a dirt racetrack.”
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
As each setup was completed, an on-set editor dropped the shots straight into the timeline, allowing McCready and Lilly to ensure that they were satisfied with how the scenes looked and also how they matched the location-based shots on either side, accelerating the postproduction workflow.
“This was the first time that Ed had shot in a volume and it’s fair to say he enjoyed the process,” Franklin concludes. “Although there is a lot of integration and technical expertise going on behind the scenes, for the DP and director it doesn’t take long to get used to the environment. That leaves them free to focus on the performance, and even empowers them to try out options that may not have been possible, due to time, budget, or safety constraints on location.”
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Clara Rugaard as Neve Kelly in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Solly McLeod as Joseph Wyatt in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
Ann Ogbomo as Christine Wyatt in “The Rising.” Cr: Sky Studios
“House of the Dragon” employed the world’s largest LED volume to create the show’s epic locations. Cr: HBO
Boasting more than 2,000 LED screens and 92 motion capture cameras, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon employed the world’s largest LED volume to create the show’s epic locations.
“It’s like something from NASA,” marvels co-executive producer Greg Yaitanes, who directed episodes 2, 3 and 10.
In the video below, watch the cast and crew discuss their experience working on an enormous volume set, and how the vastly complex Dragonstone Bridge setting was brought to the screen:
Production on “House of the Dragon.” Cr: HBO
Understand the ABCs of Virtual Production with The Virtual Production Glossary
Virtual production techniques and technologies have taken Hollywood by storm, making VP the single hottest topic for everyone from broadcasters, studios and streamers to independent production and post-production facilities. Get a handle on virtual production techniques and terminology with The Virtual Production Glossary, which was made possible with the support of the Visual Effects Society, the American Society of Cinematographers, Epic Games, and Netflix.
Designed to document terminology, definitions, and describe roles actively used in virtual production, The Virtual Production Glossary was written and edited by Noah Kadner, Addison Bath, Michael Keegan, David Morin, Miles Perkins, Ben Schneider, and Sebastian Sylwan, VES, and was created with the input of numerous industry professionals who generously provided their time and expertise, including Ben Grossmann, Casey Schatz, Girish Balakrishnan, Matt Rank, Adam Davis, Brittany Montero, Curtis Clark, ASC, Stephen Rosenbaum, Dane Smith, John Refoua, ACE, Kim Richards, Matt Madden, Michael Goi, ASC, Phil Galler, Rob Legato, ASC, Susan Zwerman, VES, Wyatt Bartel, Fae Corrigan, Vlad Bina, Steve May, Haarm-Pieter Duiker, Fernando Rabelo, Rhiannon Murphy, and Heather McCann.
The database of virtual production terms contained in the glossary is made available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 license. You can download a handy PDF version of The Virtual Production Glossary HERE, and guidelines for submission of entries and additional feedback can be viewed HERE.
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Love, Thunder, LED Volume: ILM StageCraft Advances Virtual Production on Marvel’s “Thor”
“Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios.
Actors love to work with the new virtual production LED volumes nearly as much as they despise working with green or blue screens. But unlike commenting on keying work with colored screens, about which they generally grouse, the cast and crew happily report back on “The Volume.”
Chris Hemsworth was both the star of Thor: Love and Thunder and an executive producer. Quoted In an article on The Walt Disney Company website, he likened acting in an LED volume to standing on the edge of a cliff looking out at a sunset. “To actually be staring into a sunset certainly pulls out emotions and reactions that you may not get using a blue or green screen.”
He also appreciates the light reflecting back from the screens on to his face. “It’s a beautiful interaction that occurs.”
Tessa Thompson, who plays King Valkyrie in the film, puts the effect in more simple terms: “The Volume makes it easier because you don’t have to imagine what you’re seeing.” But she also appreciates the light effects, “The way that it cast light onto our faces and costumes felt really immersive and otherworldly.”
Production on “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Director Taika Waititi on the set of “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Director Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth on the set of “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
There’s no doubt that happy actors make for increased serenity on a set, but the good news of the use for The Volume doesn’t stop there. Marvel’s production staff also had positive things to say about the new tech while shooting the latest Thor movie.
Marvel’s VFX production supervisor Jake Morrison told IndieWire’s Bill Desowitz how game engines and LED volume technology work in sync. “They would build the entire scene up to a certain level, shade it, light it, bake it all in, so the real-time engine can work with the camera.” This technique has previously been employed for VFX, but for the second Thor movie ILM also polished or finished several in-camera shots.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Director Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Integrating The Volume into the scene selection for Thor: Love and Thunder became crucial in perfecting the choice of both capture methods — The Volume and physically-built sets. Morrison detailed what technique worked best for which scene. “The Volume helped us create massive scales for the film. One of the biggest Volume sets was Omnipotence City, the home of the gods. When all the actors were in The Volume, they were able to see this incredibly expansive world. It sets the stage for the adventure that the characters are on.”
Physical sets included New Asgard, which was a complete town. “The second you stepped onto it, you would swear you were there in an actual town in Norway,” said executive producer Brian Chapek.
One of the most challenging scenes filmed in The Volume was the Battle of Indigarr. It was a large environment spread out among several StageCraft sets. The backdrop consisted of a pink-orange desert landscape with strange shapes, multiple moons, and nebulae in the sky. (See below.)
Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Chris Pratt as Star-Lord/Peter Quill, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios.
Sonia Contreras, ILM’s associate virtual production supervisor, explained the scene’s breakdown: “Part of the work that we do is mocap tracking of cameras and you have spark elements that tend to interfere with the system a bit. The challenge was to track the cameras, masking markers, and being able to get what we needed. We had Thor, the Guardians, some additional stunt actors, and actors who were going to be later replaced with CG characters.”
Originally employed by only the most technically advanced studios, virtual production has now become ubiquitous, as evidenced by series from The Mandalorian to Our Flag Means Death, as well as feature films like Dune, Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Matrix Resurrections. Gain insights into virtual production techniques from top pros with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Refreshingly, working with The Volume also allows for happy accidents, which are always welcome in whatever stage of production. There is a scene with the Bifrost rainbow effect flying by that is reminiscent of hyperspace. When she was asked to make the Bifrost go 20% faster, Contreras inadvertently increased it to 200% instead.
“All of a sudden, you had a crazy Bifrost going by, and Taika liked it so much, he was like, ‘Ah, this is awesome.’” They ended up going faster than 200%.
Of course, director Taika Waititi was no stranger to working with the Volume as he had already experienced the vast virtual set while working on the pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death. “There are disadvantages,” he told Desowitz in a separate interview. “It’s in a room so you can’t get the camera super far back or too high. It doesn’t help with coverage. But it’s a nice way of working. You can control where the sun is in the sky and shoot at magic hour at the same time of day as something else and control that weather. It’s amazing.”
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios
He also saw the benefit for his actors, “You don’t have to put a tennis ball on the ceiling and have them react to it. And for them to say, ‘What am I looking at?’ And you say, ‘No idea, we’ll figure it out in six months.’ ”
Marvel may be late to the use of Stagecraft’s Volume, but that has allowed them some advantage in the form of an increased resolution inherent in ILM’s Helios renderer. There is also the benefit of extending the use of physical sets near The Volume. More work can be front-loaded, potentially relegating post-production to more creative refinement.
A perfect example of the benefit of the hike in resolution was when a call came into The Volume team to change the color of a practical plant that had been mistaken for an animated one. “To me, that tells you that the blend was so convincing that you couldn’t tell the difference,” Contreras said. “It’s what we aim for.”
Christian Bale as Gorr in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Christian Bale as Gorr in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Christian Bale as Gorr in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Want more? On the Befores & Afters podcast, Ian Failes talks to Carlo Van de Roer and Stuart Rutherford from Satellite Lab about their work on Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. Listen to them discuss their use of in-camera lighting and imaging technology in the video below:
https://youtu.be/AYLLAlz02sg
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Filmmaking Community: How “The Territory” Put Its Subjects Behind the Camera
A network of government-backed farmers is eating into indigenous territory in the Brazilian rainforest, but a local activist and his team are fighting back… with video cameras as weapons.
New documentary The Territory follows the efforts of the Indigenous Amazon community called the Uru-eu-wau-wau to protect their land from aggressive deforestation efforts.
After winning both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Award for Craft at Sundance, the movie was acquired by National Geographic.
The film has won plaudits for portraying different sides of the conflict, a decision made by the Uru-eu-wau-wau themselves.
During a discussion with Time’s Laura Zornosa, director Alex Pritz shares what Brazilian environmental activist Neidinha Bandeiraand president of the Jupaú Association, Bitatè Uru-eu-wau-wau (members of the Uru-eu-wau-wau community use this as their last name), told him: “If we want to do something bigger and deeper and more honest, go talk to the people that are committing these acts of violence and destruction, because we’re not the cause of this conflict. Because it does a disservice to those people that are on the frontlines dealing with this messy, convoluted, complex conflict to paint things in terms that are too reductionist or too simplistic.”
“The protagonists of our film see the rainforest in very different ways,” Pritz tells Filmmaker Magazine. “Understanding these perspective differences and illustrating them through the film’s cinematography was the central creative challenge in shooting this film. For scenes involving Indigenous participants, we often shot handheld and employed a loose and fluid aesthetic on wider focal lengths. When shooting with the farmer/settlers, we would frequently switch to a tripod with a longer zoom lens to build a more mechanical feeling to our cinematography.”
Gaining trust among the community was essential, and the filmmakers did so by working with Bandeira, who has received death threats because of her work. Once she knew that the story was in good hands with The Territory’s team, she connected them with Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau, the 22-year-old president of an Indigenous leadership body that engages with the government.
Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau was appointed leader of his Indigenous community at the age of 18 and has led the efforts to fight back against increasingly aggressive invasions on his protected territory. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
Bitaté was already working with other Uru-eu-wau-wau members to set up drones and additional cameras to document illegal settlers in their home.
“Bitatè was interested in drones and what they were capable of as far as his community before we arrived,” Pritz says in an interview with Moveable Feast’s Stephen Saito. “He had had training on how to use drones and the World Wildlife Foundation had given them several drone packages, so we were saying to ourselves, ‘Wow, this is really interesting. The thing that we’re doing is the thing they find really powerful. Is there a way to merge this and blend it?’ ”
What was once forest is now a charred landscape, as settlers push into protected areas of the Amazon rainforest. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
However, many other members of the community had little to no idea about what a camera even was.
“So the next time I came, we brought some small cameras with us, and just did some really basic participatory video workshops,” Pritz tells Michael Frank at The Film Stage. “The elders had never seen a film before. So how do you ask somebody if they want to be part of a film if they don’t know what a film is? Just super basic stuff, not really planning to use any of it, just to open up a more honest conversation about who I am and what I’m trying to do, as well as to impress upon people what they were entrusting me with.”
Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau hangs his foot out of the boat while fishing in his community’s protected Indigenous territory in Rondônia, Brazil. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
Brazilian environmental activist Neidinha Bandeira. Cr: National Geographic/Amazon Land Documentary
Farmers spread pesticides in farmland carved out of the Amazon rainforest. Cr: National Geographic/Amazon Land Documentary
A settler in the Amazon rainforest. Cr: National Geographic/Amazon Land Documentary
A local farmer with a chainsaw heads into the Amazon rainforest. Cr: National Geographic/Amazon Land Documentary
An invader rides his motorcycle through the rainforest fire blaze. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
This dramatically changed in August 2020 when COVID prevented Pritz and his team from filming in the rainforest. So much trust had been established by that point though that the Uru-eu-wau-wau simply asked for more equipment to finish the filming themselves.
“Bitatè told us basically, ‘Send us better camera equipment, send us lav mics,’” he tells Saito. “We have this little stuff that’s been donated by NGOs, but we want professional equipment if we’re going to keep shooting this for you while you aren’t allowed to enter our territory.’ ”
In a discussion with Nicholas Rapold at The New York Times, Pritz elaborates: “I brought a bunch of other camera kits and audio equipment, sanitized them and left them at the edge of the villages. People would pick up the cameras, and we would communicate over WhatsApp about any technical problems. The scene that I think makes the whole film was shot by Tangãi Uru-eu-wau-wau, my co-cinematographer: their arrest of an invader. I have shot a lot of surveillance missions myself, and when we saw the footage coming from Tangãi, it was so clear from the first frame that his was just plain better. You felt the chaos and tension in a way that I just wasn’t capturing.”
A fire lit by local farmers burns in the Amazon rainforest during the summer of 2019. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
Not only did dropping off camera kits at the edge of the rainforest for the Uru-eu-wau-wau to claim ultimately keep the production going, “but the variety of perspectives yields an unusually rich overview of competing interests that make environmental crises so difficult to resolve yet put potential solutions within grasp when it can be appreciated where everyone’s coming from,” Saito finds.
Cinematography credit is shared between Pritz and Tangãi Uru-eu-wau-wau. Bitatè will become the first member of the Uru-eu-wau-wau to attend college this fall, where he will study journalism.
The Uru-eu-wau-wau are also credited as co-producers and will receive an equal portion of direct profits of the film.
Uru-eu-wau-wau children play in a stream next to their village. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
Marianna Olinger, the film’s impact producer, has been spearheading efforts to help build a multimedia and cultural center in the Uru-eu wau-wau territory using both traditional architecture and modern designs, reports Time. The center will include a production studio, podcasting area, equipment storage, and editing bays — designed for the Uru-eu-wau-wau to keep telling their own stories.
“It’s much bigger than it was originally envisioned,” Pritz tells IndieWire’s Eric Kohan. “It’s a whole other chapter in this impact campaign.”
The scorched remnants of the Amazon rainforest after a blaze set by farmers tore through the land. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
The project’s producer is Protozoa Pictures, the production outfit belonging to Darren Aronofsky, who tells Kohan that the story fitted with his own environmentally-conscious non-fiction projects like Welcome to Earth, his own directorial work like Noah, and the allegorical creation story of Mother!
“I was trying to point out that there’s a story about environmentalism that’s the fourth one in the Bible, something that’s been a part of our literature and history for a long time,” he says, about Noah. “I was trying to depoliticize it in whatever way I could.
Martins, a settler in the Amazon. Cr: Alex Pritz/Amazon Land Documentary
“Mother! was very much an outgrowth of what I was reading, thinking, and seeing happen to the environment,” he continues. “I just wanted to create a howl as loud as I possibly could.”
In the same interview, Pritz says the Protozoa team encouraged him to push the story in a more cinematic direction. “I started to think of it as a Western more than a documentary,” he says. “It was an extremely hostile environment where people are working to protect the environment, but we had to work both sides of the conflict, which was a fine line to straddle.”
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” shows how Nan Goldin’s life and work intersect with her activism.
August 23, 2022
Posted
August 16, 2022
Making “The Sandman” a Dream and a Reality
Based on the graphic novel that established the genre in the critical mainstream, the Netflix adaptation of “The Sandman” goes back to Neil Gaiman’s original story from before even a single panel had been inked. Tom Sturridge as Dream. Cr: Netflix
Despite being an acclaimed graphic novel — and one of the first to establish the genre in the critical mainstream — The Sandman has long been considered to be unfilmable. Yet Netflix seems to have done the impossible for fans and critics alike with its 10-part adaptation.
The fantasy series arrives just ahead of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel and Amazon’s epic retelling of The Lord of The Rings, and on this evidence appears to have a hit — and a franchise with legs — to compete.
https://youtu.be/83ClbRPRDXU
In the simplest terms, The Sandman follows the story of Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) — informally referred to as Dream — the Lord of the Dreaming, and one of seven immortal beings known as the Endless who are each tasked with watching over aspects of reality. Their stories, told in a format not unlike modern Greco-Roman myths, created a comic that displayed a depth and maturity not normally associated with the genre.
Various failed attempts at adaptation have wandered through development hell since the comic series was completed in 1996 (the first book in the series was released in 1989), including an abandoned 1991 movie at Warner Bros. (whose DC division published the books).
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne in season 1 episode 1 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 1 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Niamh Walsh as Ethel Cripps and Laurie Kynaston as Alex Burgess in season 1 episode 1 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Gus Gordon as Paul McGuire, Tom Sturridge as Dream and Laurie Kynaston as Alex Burgess in season 1 episode 1 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 1 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
While the equally lauded and “unfilmable” graphic novel classic Watchmen has been made (by Zack Snyder into a 2009 feature and the more recent HBO TV series), none of the attempts to get The Sandman off the ground worked “in large part due to the series’ lack of easily characterized protagonists and antagonists,” NBC Think’s Ani Bundel observes. “The structure of the stories themselves also presents a challenge.”
The graphic novel’s story, 24 Hours, for example, is defined as much by the way the graphics are laid out — 24 pages, one per hour — as it is by the plot.
But author Neil Gaiman’s involvement seems to have been the key to Netflix’s artistic success. Apparently, this is the first time he has been invited to be a key part of the creative team.
“Sandman needs time,” Gaiman tells Stephen Kelly at BBC. “If somebody had ever tried to make a movie of Game of Thrones, that wouldn’t have worked either. You need space for a big story. You need time to care about characters. In Sandman season one, we had 340 speaking parts in those first 10 episodes. That’s an awful lot of people to get to know and we’ve only just begun. We have adapted, so far, 400 pages out of 3,000.”
Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain in season 1 episode 2 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain, Tom Sturridge as Dream, and Asim Chaudhry as Abel in season 1 episode 2 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian in season 1 episode 2 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Goldie in season 1 episode 2 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 2 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Gaiman is co-credited with writing the series premiere. “Having him on board granted the series’ writers license to translate to the screen as they saw fit,” Bundel says.
The show’s co-showrunner is Allan Heinberg, who co-produces with David Goyer and Gaiman. “The only way to do this is to do it faithfully and to do it with the author,” Heinberg told IndieWire’s Sarah Shachat.
Stevie Hutchinson as Alex Logue in season 1 episode 3 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Patton Oswalt as Matthew the Raven in season 1 episode 3 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine and Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 3 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Eleanor Fanyinka as Rachel and Jenna Coleman as Johanna in season 1 episode 3 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Clare Higgins as Mad Hettie in season 1 episode 3 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
So, the team went back to the beginning: Gaiman’s story itself. And not the visuals of the original comic either, but the author’s text, which he put together before an artist had drawn a single panel.
“In terms of my prep, one of the things that Allan provided me with, which was gold, was the original comic book scripts from Neil Gaiman,” VFX supervisor Ian Markiewicz tells Lucy Baugher at Den of Geek. “Not the comic books, not the drawn panels, but the scripts he wrote for the artists [where] he described what he was trying to get at.”
Other than the comic books, the major touchpoint for the creators were the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Gaiman explained to Sachat, “There’s both a realism and a solidity and a willingness to walk away from realism in Powell and Pressburger, if you look at a film like A Matter of Life and Death, the way that they would do practical effects. And in this CGI world it’s very easy to look at Sandman and go, ‘Oh, this stuff is all CGI.’ You would be amazed at how much of it is not CGI.”
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Martyn Ford as Squatterbloat in season 1 episode 4 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 4 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer in season 1 episode 4 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 4 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer Morningstar and Tom Sturridge as in season 1 episode 4 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
The result is that though there are certain moments in the series which look as though they’ve been lifted directly from the comic panels (because several “absolutely” have), The Sandman series manages to feel like something altogether different.
“I thought that [starting with] Neil’s notes was the perfect way for us to think about adapting the show,” Markiewicz adds. “Because sometimes the comic book panel is very comic book-y, and it has that wild, quirky, zany quality, which I don’t think the show has all of that much.”
Laurie Davidson as Mark Brewer, Lourdes Faberes as Kate Fletcher and James Udom as Garry Fletcher in season 1 episode 5 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Daisy Head as Judy Talbot in season 1 episode 5 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
James Udom as Garry Fletcher and Steven Brand as Marsh Janowski in season 1 episode 5 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Daisy Head as Judy Talbot and Emma Duncan as Bette Munroe in season 1 episode 5 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Laurie Davidson as Mark Brewer and Lourdes Faberes as Kate Fletcher in season 1 episode 5 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Mirroring the episodic nature of the comic itself, each installment of the Netflix series is self-contained, shifting between time periods, settings, and genres even as it tells a cohesive larger story. Much of the show’s surreal dream states are rendered with skewed aspect ratios — a feature that seems distracting to some viewers.
The result is a show that is “startingly faithful to the comic in tone and visuals but which alters it just enough to build a consistent linear narrative around which digressions can orbit,” Bundel says.
“With lush visuals and beautifully intricate sets, there are moments that feel as though they were explicitly lifted from the pages of the original comic,” as well as episodes that deftly blend the stories of multiple issues into something completely new Baugher finds.
“It had to be amazing, no matter what we did,” Jon Gary Steele, production designer for The Sandman, tells Baugher. “Everyone felt that energy and that excitement. We were trying to keep it as cool as the graphic novel — stunning, sexy, and beautiful.”
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death in season 1 episode 6 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Jon Rumney as Harry in season 1 episode 6 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death, Tom Sturridge as Dream and John Leader as Freddie in season 1 episode 6 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine and Tom Sturridge as in season 1 episode 6 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death and Tom Sturridge as Dream in season 1 episode 6 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
“One of the big challenges on this show is just every episode [is different],” Markiewicz notes. “Each episode has new main players, it has new locations, it has new bit characters, and new additional background. It’s set at a different time [with] a new wardrobe.”
Critics seem content — though they voice concern that later seasons (this first 10-episode run could extend to another season) might be watered down creatively.
The Guardian’s Joel Golby puts its success down to two key decisions: the spectacular casting and the standalone structure of the episodic storytelling.
One episode set in a diner and another set in the same pub at 100-year intervals “really show what you can do with one story and one character and one hour of ingenuity, and give the whole series more of an anthology feel than an endless story where someone does hand gestures a lot and magic comes out,” Golby says.
Donna Preston as Despair and Mason Alexander Park as Desire in season 1 episode 7 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Goldie and Asim Chaudhry as Abel in season 1 episode 7 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Sandra James-Young as Unity Kincaid in season 1 episode 7 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne and Nicholas Anscombe as Merv Pumpkinhead in season 1 episode 7 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne, Patton Oswalt as Matthew the Raven, and Nicholas Anscombe as Merv Pumpkinhead in season 1 episode 7 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
The Atlantic’s review is glass-half-full. David Sims finds the pacing a slow burn, “letting things unfold with the care of a monthly comic rather than the punchiness of weekly TV. It makes for some very high highs — and a few languorous lows.”
He finds an ambiguity to the main protagonist, which means audiences need to be patient, especially at first.
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Kyo Ra as Rose Walker in season 1 episode 8 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Eddie Karanja as Jed Walker in season 1 episode 8 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian in season 1 episode 8 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Eddie Karanja as Jed Walker and Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian in season 1 episode 8 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Eddie Karanja as Jed Walker in season 1 episode 8 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Liam Daniel/Netflix
“So much of The Sandman’sarc is about the audience coming to understand Dream as he also comes to understand himself. But it relies on the viewer’s patience to stick with him through that process.”
Sims adds that “where the series cannot hope to compare to the comics is in its visuals; although the CGI in The Sandman is lavish and ever-present, it can’t render a dreamworld in as impressionistic a style as an illustrated comic can.”
Daisy Badger as Chantal in season 1 episode 10 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Sandra James-Young as Unity Kincaid and Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne in season 1 episode 10 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Stephen Fry as Gilbert in season 1 episode 10 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Tom Sturridge as Dream and Mason Alexander Park as Desire in season 1 episode 10 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Mason Alexander Park as Desire in season 1 episode 10 of “The Sandman.” Cr: Netflix
Want more? Netflix Geeked host Felecia Day sits down with Neil Gaiman, Tom Sturridge, Jenna Coleman, Boyd Holbrook, Vivienne Acheampong, Vanesu Samunyai, and Allen Heinberg to discuss the adaptation of the graphic novel The Sandman into the 10-episode series released on Netflix. Watch the full interview in the video below:
Or watch the cast panel and date announcement as they unveil new footage on Netflix Geeked:
Sturridge dives into the beginning moments used to for the introduction of the series’ protagonist and the start of Dream’s story:
He also breaks down how and why The Sandman series design of Dream isn’t the original design from the graphic novels:
See why Neil Gaiman thanks George R.R. Martin for all of The Sandman’s success (and why they both love actor Gwendoline Christie) in the conversation below:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“Bullet Train:” Virtual Production, New IP, All the Punching
From “Bullet Train,” courtesy of Sony Pictures
“It wasn’t the comedy or the action, but this meditation on fate and this big existential question was at the center of it,” director David Leitch tells Daron James at the Motion Picture Association’s The Credits about his new movie Bullet Train. “I felt that was so subversive and irreverent in a big bombastic assassin movie.”
All entertainment today is “twists, violence, drama, no message — what are we supposed to learn?” Lemon, one of the assassins in the film, complains.
Bullet Train is exactly one of those movies, and as James points out, “that’s all it wants to be.”
The $90 million off-the-rails actioner stars Brad Pitt as Ladybug, an assassin hired to do a job while confined on the fastest train in the world. This non-stop ride of ultraviolence puts Ladybug on a headlong collision course with various lethal adversaries played in cameo by actors from Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock to Michael Shannon by way of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz and Bad Bunny. Even Ryan Reynolds pops up.
Bryan Tyree Henry as Lemon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Tangerine in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Tangerine in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Polygon’s Joshua Rivera describes the film as “a Looney Tunes-esque actioner with a buzzy cast playing a batch of goofy assassins all on the same train to Kyoto, and all after the same briefcase.”
Leitch co-directed (uncredited) the original John Wickwith Chad Stahelski — a film that has earned them the title of “Godfathers of fight-vis,” in reference to a technique where complex fight sequences are filmed to visualize the action prior to shooting the real thing.
From “Bullet Train,” courtesy of Sony Pictures
“Chad and I were definitely on the forefront of something that now every stunt team on the planet does,” he says to James. Leitch attributes his approach, in part, to his working with Hong Kong director Ringo Lam and directing a number of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies like Maximum Risk(1997).
Director David Leitch was drawn to “Bullet Train” not because of the action or comedy, but because of what he calls “this big existential question” at the center of the story. Bryan Tyree Henry as Lemon and Brad Pitt as Ladybug. Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Brian Tyree Henry as Lemon in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Bad Bunny as Wolf and Brad Pitt as Ladybug in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
While unconventional, Leitch feels the road from stuntman to choreographer to second unit director to director was perfect for him.
He views designing action as just part of the bigger narrative, always seeking to service the story and characters first. As he explained to Den of Geek’s Gene Ching, “I decided to start to lean into directing because I’d had a lot of time practicing these mini-stories within action sequences.”
The production was one of the first out of the gate post-pandemic, but that still meant travel to Japan for principal photography was not an option. So, virtually the whole movie was shot on an LED volume at Culver City.
Production designer David Scheunemann built two full-sized train cars on the lot along with a train station set that could be redressed for each stop to Kyoto, while the LA Convention Center stood in for the Tokyo Station. A side street in downtown LA was transformed into bustling Tokyo streets replete with flashing neon signs, food stalls, and market stands.
A second unit did visit Japan to shoot footage for the LED plates of landscape viewed through the train windows. They used specialized array cameras filming routes similar to the Tokyo-Kyoto passage taken by the movie’s Shinkansen train.
However, these views were shot not from a Shinkansen but from vehicles on Japan’s freeways, traveling within speed limits that are significantly less than the 250 mph that the bullet train can reach. VFX supervisor Michael Brazelton and team sped the footage up to the train’s proper velocity. Lux Machina designed and constructed the high-resolution interactive background of the LED wall for the film.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson on the set of director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Listen: The Next Best Picture Podcast Interviews Bullet Train Visual Effects Supervisor Stephen James and Editor Elisabet Ronaldsdottir
“The biggest source of pressure for me was how do we sell the scope of our movie when we’re shooting in a sound stage on the Sony lot in two train cars that are supposed to feel like a twelve car train,” Leitch says. “The immersive environment for our actors was really helpful. Immediately you’re feeling the rhythm and the pace of the movie, instead of looking at a blue screen and trying to visualize it.”
Joey King as Prince in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/ Sony Pictures
Scheunemann’s designs allowed for the two full-sized train cars that his construction team built to be interchangeable, allowing each train car to be redressed and repurposed to serve as multiple cars.
“The only way to design a good set is to integrate every piece of lighting that you will need later on,” Scheunemann says. “It’s about crafting a set that works visually and technically on every level. Every single light source has been designed, tested, discussed, and built into the set piece to cover almost every scenario in DP Jonathan Sela’s lighting design and David’s shot list.”
Indeed, the filmmakers relished the idea of imagining and choreographing the film’s copious fight scenes in within the tight sets.
“We were in such confined spaces that it lent us to do two or three moves and then cut, or two to three moves and change the camera angle. And that heightens the physical comedy in the fights,” the director told Motion Pictures. “It all had precise timing for the comedic beats.”
For all the ingenuity the virtual production involved, Leitch nonetheless says he’ll always be more of an organic filmmaker.
“I need to be inspired by a location,” he tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub. “I need to be inspired by the touching and feeling and seeing things. I honed my comedic chops with Deadpool, and worked on sort of a comedy balance and dramatic narrative on Hobbs & Shaw. And now I’ve taken away more of a technical idea of this sort of VFX virtual production, and I’ll use it. But at the heart of me is still the stuntman choreographer who goes to a location, is inspired by that fall potential, or by those arches, and I want to shoot them. And so, I think I’ll always be that.”
Director David Leitch on the set of “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Director David Leitch and Logan Lerman on the set of “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
Original IP But Not Totally Original
Leitch insists he wanted to make an original movie, and yet Bullet Train is adapted from the Japanese mystery-fiction book of the same name by Japanese best-selling novelist Kōtarō Isaka.
“What was great about Bullet Train is that the IP was relatively unknown there outside of Japan and so I could put my creative input on it,” he tells Simon Thompson at Forbes. “We’re trying to bust out some original IP that can land in the summer or spectacle space.”
Momomon in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
The director envisages Bullet Train as the start of a franchise.
“I see it as a universe. I know that’s the buzzword that everybody uses, and they’re like, ‘We want to build a universe and all the spin-offs,’ but organically, on the page already, you had that. Not everybody’s left at the end of this film, but that doesn’t mean we can’t explore different times and places when these fun characters existed.”
Vox says the film’s novelty stems purely from celebrity cameos, adding “it’s pure escapism at its finest, with no message or lesson at its core.”
By Hollywood standards, it adds, “in this age of reboots and sequels and nothing else, Bullet Train counts as an original screenplay. It’s not; it’s adapted from a book, and more importantly, everything in it has been seen before.”
“Bodies Bodies Bodies:” Gen Z Is Killing It (No, For Real)
Halina Reijn’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is a slasher-comedy-satire with undercurrents of social commentary on the narcissism of Gen Z.
Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls is how director Halina Reijn describes her slasher-comedy-satire Bodies Bodies Bodies.
“There’s violence, blood, and deaths but I’m just interested in these young people [who are] locked up in a house without Wi-Fi,” she tells Script Magazine’s Destiny Jackson. “What do they do when faced with that scenario? Are we civilized? Or are we animals? We think we are all smart and civilized and intellectual, but then something happens and we become these weird junkies.”
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, Maria Bakalova as Bee, Rachel Sennott as Alice, and Chase Sui Wonders as Emma in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie and Maria Bakalova as Bee in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Eric Chakeen/A24
Chase Sui Wonders as Emma, Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, and Maria Bakalova as Bee in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Released by A24, the film follows a group of wealthy 20-somethings as they decide to hunker down during a hurricane while subsisting on alcohol, drugs, and drama. All horror breaks loose for the partying Gen Z group (a stacked cast featuring Maria Bakalova, Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, Chase Sui Wonders and Pete Davidson) when the storm cuts off all mobile and Wi-Fi comms forcing the group to play a parlor game called “Bodies Bodies Bodies” that turns deadly.
Reijn says the film’s undercurrents of social commentary were by design — and entirely the point.
“This film I made [is] because I’m completely and utterly addicted to my phone,” Reijn said to Nylon’s Claire Valentine.
“I’m just addicted to my screen, I’m addicted to all the social media and all the narcissism and… I’m just revolted by myself. I thought, I want to make a fun film that sort of is a comment on the time that we live in, and the way we communicate.”
Director Halina Reijin, Amandla Stenberg, and Maria Bakalova on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Director Halina Reijin narrates a scene from “Bodies Bodies Bodies”
She added: “We all know there’s so much shit going on right now, but at the same time we’re like, ‘Oh, well let’s see who posted what today.’ In the face of war, in the face of abortion being banned. Of course, my film is a very light comedy, but I wanted that dark undertone of making a cautionary tale about how we are glued to that and the sort of narcissism of our times.”
This is Reijn’s second feature after 2019 psychological thriller Instinct, on the strength of which she was hand-picked by A24.
Myha’la Herrold, Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Sennott, and Chase Sui Wonders on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Chase Sui Wonders, Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, and Myha’la Herrold on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders, and Myha’la Herrold on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Director Halina Reijin, Rachel Sennott, and Myha’la Herrold on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
“I was immediately intrigued, because I have a very tight friend group,” she recalls after seeing Kristen Roupenian’s original script. “I don’t have children. My friends are my family. And they always like to play a game called Mafia or Werewolf, or we call it Murderer. I loved it and I also hated it because I always was afraid. These games are mind games, and they basically provoke sort of a psychological warfare, if you will. And within a friend group, that’s super scary. You’re basically trying to find out who’s lying.”
Lee Pace as Greg and Rachel Sennott as Alice in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, Maria Bakalova as Bee, Rachel Sennott as Alice, and Chase Sui Wonders as Emma in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie and Maria Bakalova as Bee in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Ca-pistran/A24
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, Maria Bakalova as Bee, Rachel Sennott as Alice, and Chase Sui Won-ders as Emma in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Nonetheless Reijn adapted the script to make it “more of my own,” she said, “because it would be the first project that didn’t come from my own brain.” She rewrote it with Sarah DeLappe, a theater writer from New York, adding in more humor.
“Sarah and I edited this together… so that all of those characters in the movie are, for me personally, versions of myself and all of those relationships are all drawn from moments of my own life and Sarah’s life,” she explained to Jackson. “There’s a lot of things in the film that are private references for me and you just mix-it it up like a cocktail and throw it on the screen.”
Director Halina Reijin, Amandla Stenberg, and Pete Davidson on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Reijn sees a particular connection between the game and the culture of Gen Z. “Especially for this generation, we’re all acting. We’re all growing up in front of a camera,” she elaborates. “The game they play in the film is to catch the actor — you know, ‘is she acting,’ ‘what’s real and what’s not real?’ In some ways, the film is about the struggle to be truly intimate while being glued to our phones. We’re so used to trying to present a better version of ourselves online, and the question is who we are without that.”
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, Maria Bakalova as Bee, and Pete Davidson as David Rachel Sennott as Alice in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Pete Davidson as David in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Chase Sui Wonders as Emma, Amandla Stenberg as Sophie, and Maria Bakalova as Bee in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
Lee Pace as Greg in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: Gwen Capistran/A24
“Finding the insanely talented cast, who were ready to open up to a process in which we pretended to be a theatre ensemble, with no ego, and extremely thorough preparation, only 25 shooting days, working around the clock to create a story together, as collaborators, that would address group behavior, the need to belong and what goes wrong when people fail to look into each other’s eyes to actually see what is happening, was truly magical on a soul level,” the director says.
“Shooting incredibly long takes of incredibly long scenes — some were 15 pages long — created an acting style that was sensuous, truthful, authentic, and funny,” she continues. “It demanded everything from the cast.
“Not only did they have to operate as an experienced ensemble, but also, the shoot was technically demanding, dealing with rain, wind, cold and underwater shots. All of them were excellent and completely devoted. All of them shine in this film, in their own unique way, and together as a group. They nested themselves in my heart and will be there forever.”
Location, Location, Location: The Spectacular McMansion Featured in “Bodies Bodies Bodies”
By Jennifer Wolfe
Alongside the film’s A-list cast, the enormous tract mansion Bodies Bodies Bodies was shot in plays a major role. Architectural Digest’s Mara Reinstein got the inside scoop on the posh 2004 20,456-square-foot estate sited on 86 acres of land in Chappaqua, New York, from production designer April Lasky.
“We found a McMansion that had been on the market for a few years, and thus created our world entirely inside without much limitation,” Lasky said. “We played into the original style, which was a grotesque early 2000s Americanized interpretation of European design: gaudy, grandiose, and not quite hitting the mark with its attempt at tasteful sophistication.”
The production team opted for a bold French-inspired color palette of pink, green, blue and gold to create visual contrast. “I knew we were going to be shooting in the dark once the power went out and wanted the colors to pop,” Lasky said. “I also wanted to put us in a more vivid world, and we descend deeper in the movie with increasing violence.”
Channeling the work of photographer Larry Sultan and designer Juno Calypso, Lasky’s favorite space in the house is the sunken living room featured in the film. She envisioned it as a space Pete Davidson’s character, David, helped design himself as a teen to express his rebellious attitude. “His parents didn’t let him go all the way, so they created a balanced blend of contemporary and traditional with an eclectic colorful touch. But it’s still his personal party wing.”
Once we get past the initial setup, the thrills begin. “I hope that audiences feel the exaggerated, unhinged nature of the house,” says Lasky, “and the imminent mood that starts to form inside it right through to the bitter end.”
Want an exclusive tour of the six-bedroom, 12-bathroom house led by Davidson himself? Click HERE or on the image below to watch the video on the Architectural Digest website:
She rehearsed the cast to film in lengthy takes in the movie’s single location — an empty McMansion-style estate in an exclusive enclave in Upstate New York that convincingly reflected the high-income demographics of most of the characters in the story.
Dutch DP Jasper Wolf (who also shot Instinct) employs a mostly handheld style weaving close to the actors with extremely minimal lighting to convey the realism of being in a cavernous house without electricity. He experimented with colored flashlights, LED lights, iPhones, glowsticks and emergency lights to differentiate between characters so they could stand out during chaotic action scenes. This also meant that the actors had to move the lights to illuminate their faces or those of other actors at the right moments.
Pete Davidson on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Pete Davidson, Chase Sui Wonders, Lee Pace, and Rachel Sennott on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Myha’la Herrold, Amandla Stenberg, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, and Chase Sui Wonders on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
“We wanted the shoot to be very real and didn’t want to work with artificial lighting at all,” Reijn explained. “Because the [actors are] already focusing on their acting and then they have to also light their own faces as they move and speak. The darkness drew everyone closer together and made this limitation a very creative solution.”
A24 has always excelled with its explorations of youth culture and social media, be it with 2013’s Spring Breakers, 2018’s Eighth Grade, or last year’s Zola. Yet Bodies Bodies Bodies, “might be the most prescient, biting, and downright fun of A24’s dissections of Gen Z culture so far,” finds Collider’s Ross Bonaime.
“All this mayhem never really adds up to much,” finds AV Club’s Mark Keizer, “as if calling out Gen Z for the folly of their well-intentioned faults was enough. And yet, it is enough, thanks to the film’s very game and hard-working cast.”
Rachel Sennott as Alice in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Amandla Stenberg as Sophie in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Myha’la Herrold as Jordan and Maria Bakalova as Bee in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Pete Davidson as David and Chase Sui Wonders as Emma in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
In a wide-ranging — and spoiler-free — discussion on the ReelBlend podcast, Reijin talks with CinamaBlend managing editor Sean O’Connell and co-hosts Jake Hamilton and Kevin McCarthy about the film’s “incredible ending,” working with her cast to create not just realism but to set a specific tone, and her use of music and scoring, as well as “the ingenious way they let the actors light each other in the film’s dim night scenes.” The interview begins at the 03:58 mark, and you can also listen to Cinema Blend’s review of Bodies Bodies Bodies at 01:16:06:
Want more? In a group interview with Den of Geek, the director and cast discuss the film’s representation of Gen Z Culture, if they’ve ever played Bodies Bodies Bodies, and more:
Lee Pace on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Rachel Sennott on the set of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Cr: A24
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“Bullet Train” Editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir Speeds Through the Action
From “Bullet Train,” courtesy of Sony Pictures
On the whole, it’s wrong to try to limit any creative person’s output. Talking to Hollywood editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, ACE about her record cutting fight sequence-driven features like John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and now Bullet Train, the conclusion that she shines only at action is misguided.
Pushing her further on where her skills were forged, it becomes apparent that she has rhythm, matured by the dance choreography short films and art installations she’s done in her native Iceland. Those skills were then further honed in documentaries and over the course of a year on LazyTown, the Icelandic kids television juggernaut.
Brad Pitt as Ladybug and Sandra Bullock as Maria in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
However, Ronaldsdóttir does concede the link to movement that her action movies have. “Action for me is the alpha male dance. But it’s all choreographed the same way as a dance. But nobody gets hurt and all the blood and gore is added later.
“I do think that all editors can do whatever genre they’re challenged with. But when I was doing those dance movies, the thing that I feel that I’ve been able to take with me into the action world is the way you can just experiment with the movement, with rhythm and push the choreography even further in post.”
Ronaldsdóttir is quick to recognize the worth of her collaborations with a team she calls her “film family.” It includes director David Leitch, producer Kelly McCormick, and production designer David Sheunemann. She says she feels humbled to work with such talent and in such a creative environment.
“I feel lucky I work with the best stunt people, with producers who understand the worth of putting time and money into training people. Have a director that knows where the camera goes and an amazing DP which is Jonathan Sela. We’re like a clan.”
Momomon in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
True collaboration, Ronaldsdóttir says, means you can question each other and be open to being dialed in to something you’re missing. “Filmmaking is one of the most collaborative arts. Part of that is the dialog but also pushing each other. I need to be pushed; you have to be pushed outside of your comfort zone.
Brad Pitt and Bad Bunny in “Bullet Train,” courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment
“When you have this type of ‘clan’ there is trust so maybe you can push further. You know it’s ‘friends’ and you don’t have to tiptoe around it but always be respectful. It’s such a thrilling ride to discuss how to get a movie where you want it, we all want it.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Bullet Train resulted in around 200 hours of footage, and you have to add in at least two cameras and the off-speed captures of 45, 60 and 90 frames-per-second. But Ronaldsdóttir had her team for support, including her first assistant editor, Nick Ellsberg, whom she says she couldn’t do anything without. “We were all working remotely of course and [I] had an amazing first assistant, Nick. Let’s not pretend otherwise, he’s not my assistant. He runs that ship, and nothing would happen without him.”
Like many editors, Ronaldsdóttir isn’t particularly a great fan of technology, but she employs an AVID workflow because most production pipelines are built around the platform. She’s moved through film editing with Steinbeck flatbed editors to current-day workflows, using many different pieces of software along the way. “All this is just a tool,” she says almost dismissively. “I’m not interested really in the technique. I’ve been blessed with a great post team while I concentrate on story and characters and pace.”
Bryan Tyree Henry as Lemon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Tangerine in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
For Bullet Train, Ronaldsdóttir definitely had her work cut out for her as it features an ensemble of characters on the same train. Each one with their own story, backstory, and shining moment. “You have to balance them so all characters get to shine without over-stepping each other. It was a fun puzzle. Also because of all of our characters are played by actors that are very strong,” she recounts.
“How we brought those backstories in was something we experimented a lot with. You have to concentrate on doing the script justice,” she continues. “You have great moments when you’ve cracked a particular problem you’ve been facing. But again, that’s through a lot of experiments. You can keep editing forever, that’s why we have deadlines.
“We don’t make mistakes in post, we just make decisions,” Ronaldsdóttir concludes. And those decisions might define your part in a project. However, she doesn’t romanticize the process of editing; 30 years of experience proves that. “It took me a long time to learn that you just have to recognize a rabbit hole when you’re in one. But I absolutely enjoy just trying things and especially working with David. He’s so willing and so unafraid to take his film and turn it upside down and try different things. We’re working in movies, we should have fun with it. If we don’t have fun, why should the audience.”
Ronaldsdóttir certainly knows how lucky she has been with the movies she has been involved with. Perhaps the first John Wick movie that she cut with directors Chad Stahleski and David Leitch or Atomic Blonde, which is one of her favorites, have aided in elevating this action movie to further heights. Ronaldsdóttir thinks she knows the secret of this particular imagery.
“Chad and David and then David in Atomic Blonde brought in extremely tall actors, both Keanu and Charlize Theron. They’re so tall so all of the movements are so majestic. It happens a lot that people in stunts are sometimes smaller and it’s beautiful and amazing and fast but with those tall people you get more majesty, like the hand movements are longer, kicking is a longer movement,” she explains.
Andrew Koji as Kimura in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures
“And the team know exactly how to frame them in camera for the greatest effect. It’s such a delight working with people who have such passion. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot and still learning.”
Ronaldsdóttir has an extremely healthy attitude to her work, although she admits to being a workaholic and will soon be in Australia working on Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and David Leitch again. “We inspire each other to have ideas and it’s important that people have a safe space to bring in good ideas. But you also have to welcome bad ideas as they absolutely can spark a dialog that can lead to a perfect solution.”
Joey King as Prince in director David Leitch’s “Bullet Train.” Cr: Scott Garfield/ Sony Pictures
Want more? Speaking to Vanity Fair, director David Leitch breaks down action sequences from his movies including John Wick, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, and Fight Club:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Jordan Peele engaged Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to build a custom IMAX camera rig to capture the wide-open landscapes of “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Jordan Peele engaged Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to build a custom IMAX camera rig to capture the wide-open landscapes of “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
For the people who are sure that they’ve seen a UFO or even been party to an alien encounter, retelling the moment is always tinged with disbelief from an increasingly smirky audience. Jordan Peele’s layered new movie Nope wanted to freeze those images in people’s minds and even used a meta premise to push home the point.
Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi compares the film to a well-known early 20th century fantasy film. “Jordan Peele’s new horror-comedy, Nope, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as Otis Jr. and Emerald, the sibling proprietors of Haywood’s Hollywood Horses.
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“As they attempt to capture video evidence of a mysterious being attacking their ranch from the clouds, Nope stretches out like a camera’s bellows to the wide-open landscapes and cyclone-filled sky in a way that recalls The Wizard of Oz. OJ and Em team up with a cinematographer named Antlers Holst to nab footage of the alien using a hand-cranked IMAX camera.”
In a sideways tribute to the huge celluloid frame, Peele asked his Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema which format he would use if he wanted to document the appearance of a UFO. The answer, unsurprisingly from Chris Nolan’s usual DP, was IMAX. Such is the quality of permanence in the large format that its truth for Peele was incontrovertible and cinematically seductive.
In Van Hoytema’s hands, the portability of heavy IMAX film cameras was something that had been proven with his work with Nolan. Peele knew that Van Hoytema’s experience would elevate his new film to spectacular heights.
The cinematographer told Variety’s Jazz Tangcay about what Peele initially wanted from him. “He wanted something that felt remotely like a spectacle. He wanted to show that he had grown from the slightly lesser-scope films. With this, he wanted to explore space and vastness.”
Nope was shot on a huge ranch in Santa Clarita, California with big skies and bigger landscapes. Peele needed IMAX to be the equal of the landscape especially at night. “We spent time talking about the night because that always looks a certain way on film, and there are seven night scenes in the movie. We were out in the middle of nowhere, in nature. So, we looked at what the eye sees and what it doesn’t. We looked at how it feels to stand in the middle of the valley and be surrounded by gigantic mountain ranges and to have that space.”
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Van Hoytema was to build a camera rig that combined an infrared 65mm camera and a film camera through a prism. It was new technology that went through a lot of evolutions, but in the end, they figured out technically how to do it. “We then mixed those images to create something that felt so similar to that feeling of seeing through the darkness.”
For editor Nicolas Monsour, the results gave him an extra hurdle to jump. Despite the dailies not always complying with the IMAX cameras used during production, the rig gave the film’s editors and colorists an unprecedented opportunity.
Monsour elaborated on this with Erin Brady at Slash Film, “The film looked a little bit more like infrared when we were working with it, so that we could see what was there. And then eventually it was all dialed into this really uncanny blend of seeing out into the night. And there was a little bit more temp color correction as we went to make sure, you know, when you’re trying to judge an edit, that it’s flowing, that there isn’t a bump when you’re watching that because of some technical difference because of the film.”
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood and Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
IMAX ended up being used for around 40% of the movie, especially the night scenes as “they were the ones that drew you in.” Van Hoytema explains how “suddenly you start seeing details in the hills around you, the stars in the sky — you experience the expanse of nature. We loved that feeling, which also becomes a very scary feeling in the context of the film.”
“Nope” Editor Nicholas Monsour Explains How Jordan Peele’s New Film Straddles Comedy and Horror
By Abby Spessard
“Nope raises more questions than answers and walks a fine line between ambiguity and vagueness,” writes Slash Film’s Jack Giroux. And he may be right. Without revealing any of writer and director Jordan Peele’s secrets, editor Nicholas Monsour recounts how he assembled the film.
One of Giroux’s biggest questions surrounds Peele’s choice to eschew traditional, verbal exposition. How did the team decide what does and doesn’t need to be said? “Jordan gives his audience a ton of credit, and I think rightfully so,” Monsour says.
“One of the reasons that I think that the actors and the performances can be so grounded and real and organic is that they don’t have to sit there explaining a bunch, because it’s been worked in visually in a lot of ways,” he continues. Peele selected specific details like “the doorknobs on the ranch and the costume design and the logos on their shirts, it’s all giving you this cultural, social information, and setting all these themes in motion before a word’s even uttered,” he explains.
“What Jordan does by choosing the screen time that he does, rather than filling it with exposition, he lets you figure it out in certain parts. It gives an audience a clue that there’s much more going on than just the plot.”
Monsour asserts that there’s both a genius and a madness on Peele’s set, especially when it came to determining what would be filmed and what ended up on the floor of the edit bay. They left out “some beautiful and really revealing, interesting stuff about Emerald’s character, her daily hustle,” he said. But filming those scenes was still really important because it added “all this layer for Keke to explore.”
The shots, for example, inside the UFO — or “entity,” as the film’s crew describes it — were completely unplanned. “Jordan discovered and investigated with his VFX team after photography,” Monsour reveals. “So that’s an interesting thing that got added into that section is when we get a glimpse of what’s going on that we’re hearing down below, and we get these dark glimpses of what’s happening up there. That’s a great thing Jordan thought of that just added to that section feeling completely out of control.”
Without sharing too many details, Monsour says he never gets tired of talking about this film. “For a year, we kept pinching ourselves while working on it because we all know we don’t get to work on films this unique and exciting.”
In a separate interview with Backstage’s Jessica Derschowitz, Monsour discusses the similarities between horror and comedy. Spanning Key & Peele all the way to Us,“the main difference is focus and the experience of time.”
On the comedy show the editorial team cut a sketch a day, often completing a rough cut by afternoon. “It was a great way to learn, because the filmmaking on that show was so great… it felt like getting to go in and work on the best scene of a different movie every day. It was a fun, stylistic kind of playground.”
Monsour was comfortable making the transition from comedy to horror, he relates. “My professional work in TV and film was comedy, but for 10 years before that, in art school and other video work, I’d been working on serious documentaries and weird, scary, unusual things.” Mining this wide range of interests, he draws a line that connects the polar opposites: “[They’re] two genres where you’re really trying to elicit an involuntary physical response from the audience.”
So where does Nope fall in the line between horror and comedy? “It reminds you of a bunch of different things, but it would be a very wildly disparate list of things,” Monsour notes. “He’s developing a new kind of genre, and that’s really terrifying, because you don’t exactly know what the rules are going in.”
Peele shot using Kodak film and chose the 1.43:1 aspect ratio, specially created for IMAX, that enabled the vast landscape, UFO imagery and horse-riding scenes to show 40% more picture.
Van Hoytema and Peele entered pre-production with the usual discussion of references. He told The Credits’ Hugh Hartfrom Motion Pictures Association that movies like Lawrence of Arabia were an obvious one and perhaps even more obvious was Spielberg’s Close Encountersand even Jaws (the expanse of the ocean substituted for the vast ranch in Nope).
Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“We even watched Heaven’s Gatebecause of the horses and the dust! We’d just throw references at each other and explored how you may unconsciously harvest certain things from movies you love,” says the DP. “Funnily enough for us, it always came back to spectacle.”
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood, and Brandon Perea as Angel Torres in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
As cinematographers now know, the use of large format allows you distance but can ironically be more intimate, so how did Van Hoytema keep the intimacy twinned with the immersion of such a large canvas? Tuned Panavision lenses were the answer. “I worked with Panavision’s Dan Sasaki. He designed custom lenses both for the Panavision and for the IMAX that tweaked the focus so the camera can get physically closer to the faces of our actors. Ultimately, I think faces are the most interesting things in film. I’m not so much interested in the expanse of nature if I don’t have the beautiful face to counteract it.”
Peele and Hoytema tested their footage frequently, according to IMAX post-production head Bruce Markoe. “They did many reviews at our IMAX City Walk theater at Universal Studios during post-production, and they did reviews at our IMAX HQ,” he says. “It really enabled them to refine how the movie was going to look and play and they optimized it for the format.”
Markoe also remarked how Peele understood how to use the format creatively. “He did a shot in the movie where the camera pushes through behind the character, as he’s looking out a window. It starts small and as the camera pushes in, it goes through the window to the distance and it opens up. He really thought about how to shoot those sequences and how to take advantage of the larger aspect ratio.”
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood, and Brandon Perea as Angel Torres in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
As to how good Nope is, we’ll leave that to Collider’s Chase Hutchinson: “While both Get Out and Us are strong films in their own way, to me this is what makes Nope such an invigorating work. It shows that Peele is still pushing himself and his craft into new places, building more complex sequences that still maintain his knack for throwing visual knockout punches. To see an artist explore like this is something to cherish. From the opening moments all the way to its appropriately satisfying final shot, Peele has reached his visual mountaintop once more and there is only hope he can ascend even further from here.”
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Want more? Check out Peele’s interview about Nope with TODAY’s Craig Melvin and how the film couldn’t have been made even five years ago. He also shares a tour of the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot and a replica of the movie’s set:
Or listen to Peele describe his love of David Fincher’s Netflix series Mindhunters, and how watching his 1995 film Se7en was a formative experience, as well as why he wanted to work with cinematographer Hoyt Van Hoytema and editor Nick Monsour:
“Nope:” Jordan Peele, Social Commentary and Cinema Spectacle
From writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
The teasing, cryptic marketing campaign for Nope didn’t reveal much other than it was from the mastermind of Jordan Peele. From the director of Get Out and Us, audiences might imagine a new psychological horror, perhaps just not one that involves UFOs and filmed as a popcorn spectacle, not an arthouse satire.
It prompted articles like one at Vanity Fair from Chris Murphy, “Everything We Know About Jordan Peele’s Nope” — which, it turns out, is not a lot.
Writer and director Jordan Peele aims to deliver pure entertainment with his new film “Nope,” which combines sci-fi and horror with comedy and drama shot through with Peele’s trademark brand of satire. Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood. Cr: Universal Pictures
That’s as it should be. Far better to go into a film without the preconceptions of critics — or even of a plot — or, in this case, of a genre. It seems to be sci-fi horror with comedy and drama, shot through with Peele’s trademark satire.
Peele also aims to deliver pure entertainment, feeling that’s what we missed and what cinema needs to drive us back to the darkness of the theater.
The Universal Pictures film, which stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as a brother and sister who run Hollywood’s only Black-owned horse ranch, has prompted plenty of speculation from cinephiles about its UFO plotlines.
“It’s so tricky being considered in the vanguard of Black horror, because obviously Black horror is so very real, and it’s hard to do it in a way that’s not re-traumatizing and sad,” Peele told Brande Victorian at Essence magazine. “I was going into my third horror film starring Black leads, and somewhere in the process I realized that the movie had to be about Black joy as well, in order to fit what the world needs at this moment.”
Slash Film’s Sandy Schaefer likens Peele to M. Night Shyamalan: “It’s worth noting both Peele and Shyamalan are directors of color who bring a very different perspective to their genre films than their white peers. Even a movie like Us, which isn’t strictly about race so much as a fractured America, can’t help but quietly comment on race and the way it informs the actions of its Black characters.”
“My race, I think, has informed my entire artistic journey, and part of it has been trying to reconcile the box, and the box is that this country puts people of color in and trying to break out of that box,” Peele says in the Slash Film article.
Daniel Kaluuya and writer/director Jordan Peele on the set of “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“Even with the simple act of putting Black heroes in a movie like Nope, Peele is already setting the film apart from so many entries in the alien invasion genre before it,” Schaefer observes.
It’s partly a homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi epic that made a lasting impression on Peele, who was born two years after it was released.
“I set my sights on the great American UFO story,” he said in an interview for Fandango “And the movie itself deals with spectacle, and the good and bad that come from this idea of attention. It’s a horror epic, but it has some points in it that are meant to elicit a very audible reaction in the theater.”
Jordan Peele told us why he went @IMAX big for #Nope and the specific audience reaction he hopes to elicit.
Spectacle means more than just a blockbuster canvas, although this film is made with large format 65mm and IMAX film cameras.
“When you’re shooting on IMAX you just know you’re doing something cinematically special,” Peele said in the production notes. “The image is so overwhelming it feels like you’re there. I wanted immersion, an awe, a fear and a wonder we all had when we were kids.”
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Threaded throughout the tale, overtly and more subtly, is what it means to be addicted to spectacle (the cinema-going experience, if you will), and to be the subject of spectacle passed through the Hollywood machine (one of the characters is a washed-up child actor), and also what it means to be passed over by the film factory. This means below-the-line artists from stunts to wardrobe as much as it calls out the history of film’s blindness to people of color.
“The first film clip [Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion] was essentially a Black man on a horse who has been forgotten and erased,” Peele told Essence. “Part of this film, to me, is a celebration and a response to that. We can be the leads not only of a horror movie but also action, adventure, comedy, etcetera.”
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“In a plot twist perhaps only a filmmaker with Peele’s CV could appreciate,” Vulture’s Jason Bailey reveals that photographer and inventor Muybridge, whose experiments in motion-sequence still photography and image projection earned him the title “the Father of Motion Pictures,” was also a “stone-cold murderer.”
In 1874, Muybridge, in a fit of rage shot dead a young newspaperman named Harry Larkyns, who was having an affair with the photographer’s wife.
Wealthy former governor of California Leland Stanford paid for Muybridge’s lawyer, who helped him plead insanity and eventually walk free. Coincidentally, or not, Stanford was also the Englishman’s patron in a photographic quest to prove that when a horse was “at full gallop, all of its hooves were off the ground, making it, essentially, an airborne creature.”
Working on Stanford’s 8,000-acre Palo Alto stock farm, Muybridge developed a spring-activated, high-speed shutter system, with the first trial photos taken in May 1872. Success wasn’t achieved until June 11, 1878, when the now fully acquitted photographer used “a machine constructed on the principle of a music box,” which operated the shutters of 12 cameras in a row, each capturing an exposure of the tiniest shift in the horse’s movement.
Bailey recounts how a year-and-a-half later, Muybridge demonstrated his “zoopraxiscope, a modified magic lantern-style projector. He turned a wheel of images within it, projecting, onto a screen, a two-second clip of a horse in motion. It was, it can be argued, the first exhibition of a ‘motion’ picture.”
Ben Kenigsberg in The New York Times recognizes that in trying to “snap a photo of an elusive extra-terrestrial presence,” the film’s protagonists are “attempting to capture an impossible shot, with a subject that, like Muybridge’s horses, is too fast to pin down.”
However, Kenigsberg takes slight issue with Peele’s plot point about that first filmic equine experiment.
“Those photographs are not the images shown in Nope,” says Kenigsberg. “The Muybridge works in the movie, with the unnamed rider, are from “Plate Number 626,” part of a later series of locomotion studies that Muybridge began at the University of Pennsylvania in 1884 and published in 1887.”
What’s true, he admits, is that the “the pioneering actor, animal wrangler and stunt man shown in them probably is unknown. He sits alongside the many other male athletes, women mimicking housework and children in Muybridge’s oeuvre: an anonymous cast of characters from early film history.”
“Nope connects [the jockey] to his fictional descendants: skilled professionals whose talents go largely underappreciated and overlooked by others in the industry,” says Charles Pulliam-Moore on The Verge referencing the situation of the ranch-owning Haywoods — “people so low on the call sheet that they’re almost invisible.”
This sense of “being boxed in by others’ preconceptions is one of the ways Nope starts to build up an atmosphere of dread long before any of its human characters realize that they aren’t alone out there in the desert.”
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“Peele’s fictional twist on [the Muybridge] story points out that, while the camera has the ability to document, the very nature of cinema will always leave someone unseen,” agrees The Daily Beast’s Coleman Spilde.
“Having laid its narrative foundation in cinema’s earliest forms from the start, Nope spends its runtime tipping its cowboy hat to various notable (and not so notable) films that have come before it.”
“Any good artist can tell you that, while there is plenty of room for original ideas across a vast number of mediums, everything has been done before. What makes something innovative is how it uses those works that have come before it to influence what it wants to say now,” says Spilde. “Nope hands its themes to the audience on a UFO-sized platter in the form of easy-to-read cinematic allusions. But instead of being crushed by lofty comparisons to beloved classics, Nope succeeds because of its willingness to reference.”
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Katie Rife, writing at Vulture, is another keen-eyed easter egg hunter. “Although Nope is a less cryptic work than Peele’s last film, 2019’s Us, it still leaves a bread-crumb trail of influences and Easter eggs to enrich the experience for observant viewers,” she says.
Among the latter is a mention in the film by Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) of the “Navy Clip.” This Navy Clip purports to be “footage of encounters between US Navy pilots and mysterious flying object,” Rife reveals.
Rife says the most prominent cinematic influence on Nope is “not a single film, but the work of a director: Steven Spielberg, king of the summer blockbuster,” but she points out several references of other titles, nonetheless.
Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
There’s a hint ofThe Wizard of Oz, “especially noticeable in a shot where O.J. stands in front of the Haywood family home — a humble, isolated farmhouse, much like the one where Dorothy Gale lived — watching the oncoming twister as the sky turns dark above him,” she writes.
“One of the many movie posters hanging in the Haywood family home is for the 1972 western Buck and the Preacher, directed by Sidney Poitier and starring Poitier and Harry Belafonte in the title roles,” a prime example, says Rife, of “the confluence of Black Power and Blaxploitation that led to a wave of Black westerns in the early- to mid-’70s.”
Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
This is not accidental. “With Nope, Peele looks specifically to the history of the cinema and its intersection with the experience of Black Americans to create a backstory that virtually imbues every frame of the movie,” says The New Yorker’s Richard Brody
“Nope is a phantasmagorical story of Black people in the American West, the unwelcome among the unwelcome, and it’s set in the present-day West, namely, Hollywood and the Hollywood-proximate, the very heart of Wild West mythology,” Brody adds. “Nope is one of the great movies about moviemaking, about the moral and spiritual implications of cinematic representation itself — especially the representation of people at the center of American society who are treated as its outsiders. It is an exploitation film — which is to say, a film about exploitation and the cinematic history of exploitation as the medium’s very essence.”
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Film lover Peele also revealed to IndieWire’s Christian Zilko that the film’s UFO subject matter was conceived as an attempt to lure audiences back to the multiplexes with spectacle.
In an otherwise vacant interview with Uproxx’s Mike Ryan, Peele reveals that he deliberately wrote a story about an extraterrestrial without any regard to how possible it was to actually film it (not coincidentally this is also the dilemma of one the film’s characters which includes a revered retired cinematographer).
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood, and Brandon Perea as Angel Torres in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“Whereas Get Out started with this notion of: what if I write a script that no one would ever let me make? And how can I make a movie that’s impossible?” Peele recounts. “Well, with the fortune of success, I’ve had greater tools I can work with. It’s very important to me to continue to push and continue to start from that same starting point of, what can I do that’s impossible? What is the movie that I’m not supposed to make? That I can’t make? That I don’t know how to make? And that was the starting point.”
On his side in this endeavor was Hoyte Van Hoytema, ASC, the Swiss-born Dutch-Swedish cinematographer whose last sci-fi works were Ad Astraand Tenet.
He was tasked with filming several sequences on location day for night. Shooting day for night is a classic cinematographic problem usually overcome by placing actors at a very specific direction into the sun, preferably backlit, and then darkening the image so that it looks as if the scene is lit by the moon.
However, after testing this option, both director and DP were not satisfied with the result. “We wanted to create nights that felt spacious, epic and grand and gave us the possibility to peer into the night. Yet at the same time, we didn’t want those nights to look fake in any way,” said Van Hoytema.
They built a special rig which combined of a variety of cameras (principally the ARRI Alexa 65 with an infrared enabled chip) all perfectly aligned without parallax.
“The scale of Peele’s latest project is created specifically to be seen in IMAX,” notes Tamera Jones at Collider.
“Being the first ‘horror epic’ filmed with the iconic 15/65mm cameras for the larger and wider IMAX screens, certain shots are meant to be exclusively experienced that way. When Peele set out creating the story and vision of the film, the concept of being larger-than-life was a given.”
According to a report on the Motion Picture Association’s The Credits, van Hoytema called the experience “a very exhilarating ride. We shot on IMAX cameras, and we were not shy of doing very extreme or crazy things with those cameras.”
“When you’re shooting on IMAX you just know you’re doing something cinematically special,” Peele adds. “The image is so overwhelming it feels like you’re there. I wanted immersion, the awe and the fear and the wonder we all had when we were kids.”
In an interview with the cinematographer for IndieWire, Bill Desowitz points out that van Hoytema has taken IMAX to new frontiers on Dunkirk and Tenet, “going almost anywhere on the ground, in the air, underwater, and even running backward for the latter’s time-inversion technique,” but went even further on Nope. “He took the bulky camera on his shoulder and on helicopters to achieve a unique sense of grandeur and mounting terror.
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood and Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood and Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
“The IMAX sequences are very much anchor pieces, beginning with a bizarre opening at the Haywood ranch that’s an immediate attention grabber and has us wondering what it means,” Desowitz adds. “There’s even an IMAX camera in the movie (operated by cinematographer Antlers Holst, played by Michael Wincot).”
And, according to van Hoytema, the camera in the film is “a nod to the model used for the IMAX-produced space station documentaries in the ‘80s, including the hugely popular The Dream is Alive.”
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Big Message
The film format is not the only thing that’s larger than life about this movie. “Nope is as big a summer event film as they come,” Gerrick D. Kennedy informs us in GQ. “If the billboards or Internet hype doesn’t tell you that, just consider the fact that a stone’s throw from where our interview took place, a massive (and pivotal) set piece from Peele’s movie is now permanently erected at Universal Studios Hollywood as part of the theme park’s popular studio tour attraction. It’s the first time an attraction on the tour has opened day and date with its film’s release, and the first time a Black director has had their own attraction at the park.”
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood, and Brandon Perea as Angel Torres in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Peele tells Kennedy he was inspired to write Nope during the COVID lockdown, and that his approach to the film was shaped by the circumstances under which he wrote it. “I wrote [the film] trapped inside and so I knew I wanted to make something that was about the sky,” he says. “I knew the world would want to be outside and at the same time, I knew we had this newfound fear from this trauma, from this time of what it meant to go outside. Can we go outside? So I slipped some of that stuff in.”
Peele developed the film through some very tumultuous times in American life, including the January 6 Capitol riot. This also had an effect on writing the film, as he tells Jake Coyle at AP News.
“Attention can be a violent thing and our addiction to spectacle can have negative consequences. I think sometimes if we give the wrong spectacle too much attention, it can give it too much power. If we are obsessed with the wrong spectacle, it can distract us from what’s really going on. There’s really a human need to see the unseeable that our entire society is based around. And in so many ways we see it. The last five years, it feels like we’ve gone from seeking spectacle to being inundated with it. And that’s the environment I wrote the film in.”
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Cr: Universal Pictures
Ian Cooper, producer and creative director of Peele’s film company Monkeypaw, reveals to KC Ifeanyi at Fast Company that a lot of first ideas Peele had around the film were visual. “I remember very early on, before there was even a plot to the movie, he had this image of a UFO as an umbrella in a rainstorm, and the feeling it would have to feel rain on the roof of your car or in your house. And then all of a sudden to feel a hard rain wash over you, which is the watershed of the circumference of the UFO, and then all of a sudden be totally without rain — what a horrifying feeling that would be. He thinks very visually and a lot of the way he builds around a movie in the very origins of it is through a series of haunting images.
Peele is “in complete and utter command of every image he puts on screen. Nothing feels purposeless as everything we get to see almost feels destined to permanently etch itself in your memory,” says Chase Hutchinson at Collider, adding that this is “one of the many reasons that Nope may be Peele’s most accomplished and audacious film yet.”
“It fittingly becomes about characters just trying to capture one perfect shot that finds a whole bunch of great ones of its own along the way,” says Hutchinson. “This allows for Peele to poke fun at himself and the art form in which he works while still making every moment of visual storytelling absolutely sing.”
“It’s really what you would call a cinematic experience, that is literally what Jordan has created,” the film’s star, Keke Palmer, tells Kate Erbland at IndieWire. “It’s like nothing else that you’ve seen of his before, but yet is just as thoughtful and has so much to say as the other things that you’ve seen. But the tone of it, the way that it balances horror and action and adventure, it’s just very unique.”
“Making a movie that involves the moviemaking process is just so inherently meta,” Peele himself later reveals to Erbland. “When you’re on a set that has a set [within it], it gets very confusing. The first thing we have to acknowledge is we’re making something about what we do and we’re trying to uncover some of the insidiousness of it, and the horror specifically that comes from the search for spectacle, the addiction to spectacle, and the negative sort of whirlpools of trauma that you can get in through this industry by being addicted to the attention.”
Regarding attention, Peele himself joined in hyping the film by sharing a link to the “Jupiter’s Claim” website on his Twitter feed, a fictional theme park that appears to be headlined by Steven Yeun’s character in Nope.
“Website visitors are immediately greeted with a salutation from Yeun’s character Ricky “Jupe” Park, who introduces himself as a “former child actor and reality TV star of ‘Kid Sheriff’ fame,” reveals Variety’s J. Kim Murphy.
“Upon clicking past the message, the sunny disposition of the website takes on a gloomy blue as the music distorts into a sinister boom. The cartoon portrait of Yeun’s cowboy has his frown turned upside-down as he glances upwards toward the sky.”
Yeun, whose career has spanned notable roles in projects like The Walking Dead, Invincible, and Sorry To Bother You, discussed with Gizmodo’s Sabina Graves how working with Peele stands apart from his early body of work. “The thing that I have learned is in those genre setups, it’s easy to maybe rely on the tropes, but really I think we’re all looking for something deeply human and that’s what makes it unsettling,” he says.
“When Jordan asked me to be a part of this, we had a lot of conversations, and I think we could have left it at certain places where it would have ended up maybe being more of a trope. But we’ve never really let the conversation live there. It always ended at like a deeply human person… I don’t think he’s necessarily always trying to construct something that’s, like, not real. I think he’s always trying to do something that’s very real.”
All of the guessing games about the film might have been rendered null and void had the writer/director kept the project’s working title, “Little Green Men.”
“Though that would more directly reference the concept of aliens, it’s actually a double entendre that speaks to the larger themes his story has in mind,” notes Slash Film’s Jeremy Mathai.
“I’m always talking about something human, a human flaw,” Peele said. “And there was something about our connection with spectacle and money and our monetization of spectacle. And so, the ‘little green men’ that I started talking about [were] the little green men on the money.”
“The pursuit and poison of fame are its cardinal fixations,” agrees Wired’s Jason Parham. “[Nope] is a movie squarely concerned with exteriors, one meant to challenge the image-centric culture on which all of us feast.
“The ambrosia of suspense is not about what happens but how it happens,” Parham writes. “The end point is immaterial in Peele’s twisted jamboree of nightmares, the magic manifests en route. It’s why Nope is an ideal canvas not simply to insert Black ways of seeing in historically bereft film genres… but as a sharp comment on the toxins of social media, and how it can poison us.”
“While it may be decidedly more sci-fi than Peele’s previous efforts, Nope still contains plenty of his signature brand of horror,” Christian Zilko says in another IndieWire article. “In fact, Peele says that the title came from his hope that audiences will yell out “nope!”
Early social media reactions to the film were positive. “Nope is out of this world. A monster mash with great performances (esp. Kaluuya) and a 50s sci-fi invasion motif. A spectacle about the horrors of spectacles,” tweeted CNN business reporter Frank Pallotta.
NOPE is out of this world. A monster mash with great performances (esp. Kaluuya) and a 50s sci-fi invasion motif. A spectacle about the horrors of spectacles.
Jordan Peele has been compared to Hitchcock, but NOPE shows he’s a next-gen Carpenter. Enjoy the show and don’t look up. pic.twitter.com/dGKwbXg0WF
Heather Wixson, managing editor of the Daily Dead News, was also enthusiastic: “Perfectly blends together a sci-fi spectacle w/a story that is also something of a Hollywood reckoning & it blew my expectations away. Gorgeously shot, the sound mix is thunderous & the cast all shines. Love love loved it.”
So #NopeMovie is absolutely phenomenal in so many ways. Perfectly blends together a sci-fi spectacle w/a story that is also something of a Hollywood reckoning & it blew my expectations away. Gorgeously shot, the sound mix is thunderous & the cast all shines. Love love loved it. pic.twitter.com/qdcZIvsX5T
— Heather Wixson (@MMEFXBook is available now!) (@thehorrorchick) July 19, 2022
True (True) Crime: Making Dennis Lehane’s “Black Bird”
Here’s your choice: Serve a 10-year jail sentence, or go free after transferring to a maximum-security prison and getting a potential serial killer to confess. That seed feeds the drama of Black Bird, a true-crime saga adapted by thriller novelist and screenwriter Dennis Lehane.
“The thing I locked in on was the sense of being dropped into a type of hell and having to navigate without a map,” says Lehane in TV Insider.
The AppleTV+ series stars Taron Egerton as charismatic drug dealer Jimmy Keene and Paul Walter Hauser as serial killer Larry Hall, with Keene’s father played by Ray Liotta in his final TV role.
The Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert summarizes the choice Keene is forced to make at the beginning of the series: either serve 10 years in a minimum security prison, or “enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane, befriend a suspected serial killer, get him to confess where he buried the bodies, and walk free.”
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
As the story unfolds, many gray areas emerge. Says Lehane, “I don’t think too many people are just straight-out evil.”
The six-episode drama is based on the real James Keene’s 2010 autobiography, In With the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption.
Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Game Rant’s Raven Brunner spoke with Lehane, who also serves as showrunner of the series. “This might sound strange, but I’ve been looking to tell a story that has a clean mythological line, and this was it,” he said.
“If you look at it, it has all the trappings of a classical hero’s journey: you have this young man, he is sent out by his village to confront an ogre that is threatening members of the village, he heads out into a dark forest and battles the monster, and he comes back a changed man. It’s as old as time.”
Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene and Sepideh Moafi as Lauren McCauley in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg contends that while the series isn’t necessarily very authentic or convincing on a factual level, “it is, however, thoroughly unsettling and anchored by exceptional performances by Paul Walter Hauser, Taron Egerton and Ray Liotta.”
Fienberg lauds Egerton for doing “an astonishing job of making Jimmy feel like something resembling a person beyond the hagiography… Lehane, along with series directors Michaël R. Roskam, Joe Chappelle and Jim McKay, recognizes that although Jimmy is our eyes and ears, eventually viewers are just going to want to concentrate on the chilling, layered thing that Hauser is doing.”
Hauser’s approach was to present Larry “initially through key external traits like his reedy voice and bushy sideburns.” But then, Feinberg noticed how he starts to dig into not just Larry’s pain, but the pain he caused others. “Larry is scary, but he’s at least as sad and pathetic. The series’ running time and Lehane’s reliable gift with dialogue construction are able to showcase both these sides of him.”
Greg Kinnear as Brian Miller in episode 1 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
Valerie Ettenhofer at The Playlist points out that while Egerton and Hauser are sure to dominate conversations, Kinnear, Moafi and Liotta deserve praise as well. “The plot is a pressure cooker, but Jimmy has to move with deliberate ease,” she explains. “Everyone around him isn’t quite as restricted, and often, the unexpressed anguish shows up on the faces of the people who have to bear witness to Jimmy and Larry’s realities from outside the prison bars.
“The show weaves so much meaning into each moment that no role feels minor: supporting actors including Robyn Malcolm, Jake McLaughlin, and Laney Stiebing also put in noteworthy work as Jimmy’s step-mom, Larry’s brother, and a young murder victim, respectively.”
Ray Liotta as Big Jim Keene in episode 3 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 3 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Sepideh Moafi as Lauren McCauley and Greg Kinnear as Brian Miller in episode 2 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
In the Just Shoot It podcast, Lehane explains that the tone for the show was influenced by Netflix shows Mindhunter and Ozark among others.
“I was really clear with the production designer and with the DP and the directors that that I had a strong visual palette for what I wanted to see. The palette that I wanted for the pastoral scenes was a Days of Heaven Terrence Malick vibe, and I wanted Jimmy’s life to be Michael Mann. I wanted it to be very sleek, very cold. So that the juxtaposition of the two worlds is that they can’t really ultimately come together. And then into this pastoral world comes the [serial] killer.”
Robyn Malcolm as Sammy Keene and Ray Liotta as Big Jim Keene in episode 2 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
He says he also made a point not to show any of the actual murders on screen, preferring to suggest horror in much the same way that Hitchcock did in Psycho.
The podcast hosts also mention Taryn Egerton, who is also a producer on the show, asking, “Are we ever allowed to cast American actors to play Americans? In America?”
“I’m worried those days are coming,” jokes Lehane. “I feel like with Taryn, it just goes back to you know, the Brits, man. Gotta love working with the Brits. You just get so much range and you get a lot less BS. You know, they’re not like running around going out and shooting dogs at night. So they can authentically play a psycho. They’re trained, classically trained actors.”
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall and Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in episode 3 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Gavin Bond/Apple TV+
Lehane explained the reasons why he was drawn to the project on an episode of the Bingeworthy podcast from The Playlist: “If you look at this story, there are three to four major male parts. And, of them, for me, you have every worthwhile picture of masculinity.” he said.
“The one that I would want to be is Miller, played by Greg Kinnear. He’s methodical, he’s rational, and he doesn’t let a narrative take hold until he’s followed the facts to their natural & rational end. And then you have this loving bear of a disaster in Ray Liotta playing Big Jim. He’s loving, he’s a screw-up, but he’d run into a fire for his son without a look back. And then you have, at the far end, the worst example of toxic masculinity — a serial killer who preys on women he doesn’t know. Where’s Jimmy in all of this? Jimmy’s our every man. He’s us. He’s our guide in. So, that was the story I wanted to tell.”
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 2 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
Speaking to NPR, Lehane recounted that he was initially very resistant to taking on the project. “I was just adamant,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it. I was so sick of darkness. I’d just done three Stephen King projects. And then I was like, prison? I like prison. And it’s all dudes. I don’t like things with all dudes.”
But then he conceived of a new approach: What if a central theme of the show was the destructive nature of the male gaze? “I started to realize, oh, my God, this is a really interesting story about where all men fall on the misogyny line. If I can make this show about sort of weaponization of the male gaze, then I’ll do it.”
“Right off the bat, I saw the story in very mythological terms,” Lehane told Jollie Lash at The Wrap. “I was just like, ‘This is the story we’ve been telling — humans have been telling — since the dawn of time.’ ”
Partnering with Egerton, the two had a firm sense of the material and the aesthetic they wanted to create. “I wanted the show to be very Greek, ancient Greek in the sense that most of the violence happens off screen… and simultaneously, I wanted it to be extremely disturbing,” he recounts, admitting that he does want the best of both worlds, to have his cake and eat it, too.
That’s where the dialogue starts to really play an important role.
Jake McLaughlin as Gary Hall and Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 4 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Lehane was a writer on The Wire, and earns most praise for his dialogue. Lucy Mangan, TV critic at The Guardian, judges “this allusive, switchbacking dialogue Lehane’s finest work yet.”
Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in episode 4 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jake McLaughlin as Gary Hall in episode 4 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 4 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
IndieWire’s Ben Travers asked Lehane how he wrote the dialogue between Jimmy and Larry, and how often he was able to source out what was said.
“Well, Jimmy’s description of his dance with Larry in the book is sometimes more paraphrased, so it’s hard to say what the specifics are,” Lehane said, acknowledging that some of the conversations come right from the book, while others demanded that he “put on my weird transportation hat and teleport myself into Larry’s head.”
Lehane knew he “had to reconstruct the dance between these two guys. And once I said, ‘Well, I’m going into the buzzsaw that is misogyny,’ then I at least had a thematic template.
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall and Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in episode 4 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Apple TV+
“I started with Larry. Larry would say these bizarre things. And Jimmy would be, ‘OK, I’m just going to try to keep up here in this conversation.’ Then as time goes on, Jimmy has to start instigating the conversation, so he has to start telling stories about himself. Some of them are true, some of them are lies. But once the toxicity of [Larry’s] loneliness meets up against the toxicity of his hatred for women, once those two come together, maybe he’ll confess. And that’s the key.”
Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall in episode 2 of “Black Bird.” Cr: Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+
In his separate review for IndieWire, Travers calls Black Bird “a stealthy piece of storytelling that works quite well as a tense, cat-and-mouse thriller.”
The continuing investigation into Larry’s murders “creates a familiar rhythm that the show can be a little too eager to lean on, but Lehane still subverts the traditional TV detective genre by illustrating law & order’s systemic limits.”
Want more? Showrunner Dennis Lehane and actors Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser talk to The Inside Reel about approach, truth, masks and expectation in regards to their new dramatic Apple TV+ series Black Bird:
Or watch Black Bird creator and showrunner Dennis Lehane as he talks to Screen Rant’s Tatiana Hullender about the process of adapting a real-life crime story for Apple TV+, and why working with Taron Egerton was such a joy:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Tiny Is Beautiful: The Magic of Making “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”
It took more than a decade for the hybrid stop-motion/live-action “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” to move from his DIY origins to a full-length feature. Cr: A24
Stop-motion animation proceeds at a snail’s pace at the best of times, but it took over a decade for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On to move from his DIY origins to a full-length feature.
When director Dean Fleischer Camp and his co-writer and star Jenny Slate made their first short featuring the one-eyed mollusk, in 2010, they couldn’t have imagined its impact: more than 32 million views to date on YouTube.
Dean Fleischer Camp and Marcel (Jenny Slate) in “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
Those shorts have now been adapted into a feature film, a process that Camp worried could rob the project of its low-fi, low-budget charm.
“I think especially with processes that are really technical,” he told Jason Bailey at The New York Times. “You can very easily lose the authentic, organic thing.”
As Marcel’s short films went viral online, Hollywood studios and networks approached Camp and Slate. The duo took the meetings but were wary of attempts to attach Marcel to a more familiar tentpole template.
“I remember somebody suggested that we partner Marcel with Ryan Reynolds so they could fight crime,” Camp recalls to Carlos Aguilar at the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t watch that movie, but I just knew that was not the right avenue to pursue for him. We knew after that round of meetings, ‘If we’re going to expand Marcel, it needs to be made independently.’ ”
Nana Connie (Isabella Rossellini) and Marcel (Jenny Slate) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Mar-cel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
Camp says he was committed to preserving the authentic, loose-sounding audio and documentary texture of the originals, he explained in an interview with Jack Smart at the AV Club. “So we kind of had to invent a new production model in order to do that.”
Marcel (Jenny Slate) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
Joining creative forces with co-writer Nick Paley, the team wrote a long treatment and started hosting recording sessions where Slate would give form to Marcel’s dialogue with spur-of-the-moment ingenuity. Based on what those improvisation meetings yielded, Camp and Paley slowly polished and rerouted the plot.
Director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
“They would put together a patchwork of transcription of recorded audio and then write new scenes. Then we would record off of those written new scenes and improvise off of them too,” Slate told Bailey. “Most of the film is highly improvised, while some parts were word-for-word written out, depending on what Dean and Nick decided to do.”
Marcel (Jenny Slate) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
Almost nothing is recorded inside a studio except a few lines as pickups. “The path most Hollywood projects take is: you write a screenplay and then you make the movie,” Dean tells the AV Club. “I’ve always felt like that robs us of so much that can happen in the way that people interact non-verbally. So with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, you can hear it in the audio. You would never write certain lines if they hadn’t been in the same room.”
Marcel (Jenny Slate) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
During this time, they found backing at indie darling A24, which helped bring aboard arthouse icon Isabella Rossellini to voice a key character.
The writing and recording and iterating process took two-and-a-half years, but audio was only part of the challenge. Whereas the camera for the shorts was kept pretty static, Camp knew that a feature-length narrative would require more movement, more locations, and more interactions with other characters. Plus, they would stick to the format of the stop-motion/live action hybrid.
Jenny Slate, Nick Paley, Dean Fleischer Camp, and Isabella Rossolini on the set of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: Marcel The Movie LLC
This type of production has been around since the earliest days of cinema but there are very few features made this way, partly because of how complex it is. The filmmaker essentially has to commit to shooting every shot in the film at least twice, first live-action and then stop-motion. And in the final edit these elements combines provided both sets of footage are a perfect match.
Nana Connie (Isabella Rossellini) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
“It’s so complex and labor-intensive, but I felt committed to it for that reason,” Camp explains in the film’s production notes. “The constraints that make stop-motion so hard can actually result in more textured, emotional performances because it’s such an imprecise, human process. That fallibility translates into a kind of warmth.”
Lesley Stahl in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
So, when shooting the live-action portion, stop-motion cinematographer Eric Adkins took notes of every minute detail — lens, depth-of-field, the distance and angle of the camera to the characters, the distance to props, every source of lighting. Anything that was reflective that the character was standing near that might bounce light on him so they could recreate it exactly on the animation stages. If any tiny detail was off, the animation wouldn’t mesh well with the live-action plate.
From “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” courtesy of A24
“You should see his iPad, it’s just like, every time I glanced down at it, it was like A Beautiful Mind scratchings of equations and measurements,” Dean recounts to the AV Club.
Marcel (Jenny Slate) and Nana Connie (Isabella Rossellini) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Mar-cel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival and recently went on nationwide release. “As with the shorts, the tweeness factor is high,” reviews Rolling Stone’s David Fear, “though mileage may vary on whether you add ‘unbearably’ as a descriptive there.”
Marcel (Jenny Slate) in director Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.” Cr: A24
But even the harshest critic finds an “extreme sense of melancholy and isolation,” that resonates with the hardest of hearts.
Fear says: “The ache of loneliness pulses at the center of this labor of love.”
Grotesque and dark visuals were just the start for director David Fincher’s first foray into animation for “Love Death & Robots: Volume 3.”
June 29, 2022
“The Old Man:” Measured, Methodical and Jeff Bridges Punches Everybody
The Dude abides: Jeff Bridges stars alongside John Lithgow and Amy Brenneman in “The Old Man,” based on the book by Thomas Perry and created for television by Jonathan Steinberg and Robert Levine. Cr: FX
The main interest in new FX drama series The Old Man is the old man playing the lead. It’s all the Jeff Bridges baggage from his youth in features from The Last Picture Show and his cult Dude for the Coens’ Big Lebowski to grizzled Hollywood veteran in Hell or High Water, combined with his brush with COVID and cancer, which seems to enrich the onscreen story.
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Kurt Iswarienko/FX
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams in “The Old Man.” Cr: Kurt Iswarienko/FX
Gbenga Akinnagbe as Julian Carson in “The Old Man.” Cr: Kurt Iswarienko/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
The Old Man centers on Dan Chase (Bridges) who absconded from the CIA decades ago and has been living off the grid since. When an assassin arrives and tries to take Chase out, the old operative learns that to ensure his future he now must reconcile his past. John Lithgow and Amy Brenneman also star in the original created for television by Jonathan Steinberg and Robert Levine.
“What was interesting about this conceit is what happens when you were Jason Bourne 30 years ago,” Steinberg tells Brandon Katz at The Wrap.
“It’s a story that is really about these guys confronting their mortality, especially in the case of Dan Chase. He’s a person who has dodged mortality and felt immune to it in some respect to get through all of the things he’s gotten through and now it’s about what happens when you can’t dodge it anymore and your body is failing you and you’re living alone and your children are grown.”
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Joel Grey as Morgan Bote in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase and Amy Brenneman as Zoe McDonald in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Littlefield and Steinberg presented the 72-year-old Bridges with an undeniably appealing pitch, as they recounted to Margy Rochlin at Emmy magazine. The duo saw expanding author Thomas Perry’s novel into a series as a chance to riff on the themes Clint Eastwood pondered in The Unforgiven, his 1992 Western about a gang of aging outlaws.
“Stylistically, they envisioned something akin to ‘70s nailbiters like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View,” she writes. Framed in this manner, The Old Man begged for an actor of Bridges’ stature. “You don’t make Unforgiven with an unknown,” Steinberg reasoned. “It immediately felt like a movie-star role.”
Adding to Bridges’ iconic status as a fan-favorite is his Lazarus-like comeback from the double whammy of dual disease.
As Rochlin details, the original plan was to shoot the first half of the series on location in LA, then move the production to Morocco to shoot the rest of the episodes. But in March 2020 — four days before leaving for northern Africa, where a unit had already been dispatched and sets were being built — production was forced to shut down due to the pandemic.
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams and John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Bill Heck as young Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Raymond Liu/FX
E.J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
E. J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters and John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Joel Grey as Morgan Bote in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Seven months later, just as filming was about to resume, Bridges announced he had been diagnosed with lymphoma and wouldn’t be returning until he completed chemotherapy.
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper and E.J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper and E.J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
After receiving chemotherapy, the actor contracted COVID-19 and spent nearly six weeks in the hospital. “I surrendered to the idea that I might die — that it might be the end of the race,” Bridges said at the show’s premiere, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Gardner. “That’s what’s going to happen to all of us at some point, and maybe this was my time to go through that.”
The show’s premise mines a profitable genre in recent years. Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson and Bob Odenkirk have all played characters retired from the fray and brought reluctantly back to action (with all their spycraft and martial arts chops intact).
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper and Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams and John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Leem Lubani as Young Abby in “The Old Man.” Cr: Raymond Liu/FX
“[The show] offers the reliable entertainment value of seeing a silver-haired professional bring his deadly skills to bear against younger opponents,” Make Hale, television critic for The New York Times, finds. The seriousness of the show’s approach to Chase, and Bridges’ excellence in the role, are what set The Old Man apart, but it’s also a well-above-average if unusually pensive and introspective spy thriller.
Chase Hutchinson, senior feature writer at Collider, thinks the closest reference point of what the series feels like it is going for is the 2010 George Clooney film The American, a work that was essentially an arthouse take on the spy film.
“This show is often as conflicted as its central figure, grasping at being more character-driven while also dipping into expected action fare. It does this with recurrent fight sequences that, while competently directed and staged, are nowhere near as interesting as the more deliberate moments built around the gravitas of Bridges.”
E.J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
John Lithgow as Harold Harper in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams and E. J. Bonilla as Raymond Waters in “The Old Man.” Cr: Prashant Gupta/FX
Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall agrees. “Even if FX had opted to change the title from to maybe The Dude Abides Murder —The Old Man would still feel somewhat generic,” he writes.
“The story feels like an afterthought, and the energy level tends to droop whenever Bridges is not getting his homicide on.”
Want more? Learn more about how the story went from novel to script to screen in this interview from FX Networks with The Old Man series creators and star Jeff Bridges:
Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow reveal what it was like playing opposite a stacked cast in this inside look at the series from FX Networks:
Or, watch Jeff Bridges and the stunt crew of The Old Man dive deep on the process of crafting those harrowing action scenes:
Finally, watch this Q&A from the Television Academy with Jeff Bridges as he talks about the new FX thriller. After taking a long break in filming due to the COVID shutdown and his treat for lymphoma, he shares how it was good to be back on set:
“The Old Man” Takes Its Place Among the Classics
By Abby Spessard
Stemming back to ancient Greece, when Homer first recited The Odyssey aloud, the classic trope of a war-hardened man returning home has continued to resonate with audiences. Centuries later, director Francis Ford Coppola created another classic in the same vein with Apocalypse Now, his adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s chilling novella, Heart of Darkness.
For Collider’s Nathan Maizels, FX series The Old Man, created by Jonathan Steinberg, is right up there with these iconic works.
Forced into hiding, Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) is estranged from his wife and daughter and living off grid after making enemies during the Soviet-Afghan war. “His situation is akin to being stranded, much like the hero Odysseus from The Odyssey on Calypso’s island,” Maizels recounts. “Both stories open with a character that found returning from war was a difficult, if not impossible, task.”
Although the heroes of both stories face very different challenges, Maizels points out that the parallels between them become even more evident as the series progresses. “With The Old Man, we get to see an epic unfold before our eyes and see Chase’s return home from Afghanistan through flashbacks.”
Maizels also cites the relationship between Alcinous and Odysseus, comparing it to that of Chase and Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman). “Chase’s stop-over with Zoe McDonald is close in form to Odysseus’ stop with the Phoenicians. Initially, Chase hides his true identity from Zoe, and she takes to him and offers help. When she eventually learns his true identity, like Alcinous to Odysseus, she still wants to help him.”
Chase’s daughter Emily (Alia Shawkat), is another example. Her secret identity as FBI agent Angela Adams, tasked with hunting Chase down, places her in the same position as Odysseus’ son, who must thwart the suitors that have taken over his home in his father’s absence.
Apocalypse Now is another Odyssean journey, Maizels contends. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) struggles with flashbacks and hallucinations in the opening sequence. Chase experiences a similar start: “The Old Man opens with scenes of Chase struggling to sleep, grappling with hallucinatory visions of his dead wife,” Maizels explains. “Both scenes evoke a lost feeling. Both Willard and Chase know that they are not where they want to be in life, but neither knows if returning from war is even possible.”
But Chase might actually be more of a stand-in for Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) than Captain Willard, says Maizels. “It is almost an alternate ending where Kurtz survives well into adulthood with Willard, his assassin, lurking behind closed doors,” he observes. “In this way, FBI Agent Harold Harper (John Lithgow), who was the Chief of Station during the war and is currently tasked with hunting down Chase, serves as a Captain Willard-type character.”
Maizels writes that Steinberg has created a series that stands out in its genre. “The way The Old Man delves into the depths of the incitement to journey and the universal aching for home sets it apart from other entries in the retired-veteran-that-still-kicks-butt genre.”
“Ms. Marvel” (Literally) Brings Some Girl Power to the MCU
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Directing duo Adil and Bilall cite “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” and classic John Hughes movies as influences on their approach to “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
With all the positive inclusivity apparent in the MCU, Ms. Marvel is possibly the shining light of that sentiment. Moroccan-Belgium filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah saw Ms. Marvel not as a sanctimonious morality tale but, as they told Insider, “as a show that should be filled with color, life, and celebration of culture.”
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Rish Shah as Kamran in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Insider’s Jason Guerrasio lays out Ms. Marvel’s origins: “The Ms. Marvel comic-book character was created by editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson, and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie. The comics follow a Muslim teen named Kamala Khan (played by Iman Vellani in the series) as she navigates her teenage life in Jersey City, New Jersey.”
But things get interesting when she unlocks powers that give her the ability to enlarge and stretch her body. Khan, who is obsessed with Captain Marvel, sets out to become her own superhero.
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Matthew Lintz as Bruno, Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia, and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Within their vision of the show, the directing duo (known as Adil and Bilall) saw an augmented reality as part of Kamala’s positive spirit. They had a number of influences for animation to add an extra dimension to the tale. However, first they had to pitch studio head Kevin Feige and his team.
“We did this whole PowerPoint presentation and we told them that this is our influences for the show. Into the Spider-Verse was a big one because of the animation.” Adil added. “We wanted to portray that dream world of Kamala Khan and the comic book aspect to it. We were afraid that Kevin would say no because it’s different from the other shows of the MCU.”
The filmmakers pointed to everything from John Hughes’ classic high-school movies to Boy Meets World as their guiding lights. “American high school from the 1980s and 1990s was a big inspiration for us,” Bilall said. “Very colorful and very young.”
But SlashFilm’s Sandy Schaefer picked up on more elemental influences like Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan, aka the “King of Bollywood” when they spoke with head writer Bisha K. Ali. “I’m obsessed with Shah Rukh Khan,” he said. “I was torturing our writers like every single lunch break… I would make them watch the Chaiyya Chaiyya video, him dancing on a train in this red bomber jacket.
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan and Matt Lintz as Bruno Carrelli in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Daniel McFadden/Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Daniel McFadden/Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan and Matt Lintz as Bruno Carrelli in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Daniel McFadden/Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Daniel McFadden/Marvel Studios
Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia, Matthew Lintz as Bruno Carrelli, and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Daniel McFadden/Marvel Studios
“And so there’s so many of those different influences and elements we wanted to weave into the show, and I think we just did it. I think everybody all together got behind this huge melting pot of things that we wanted to include.”
But other inspiration originated from closer to home, the lead herself. Sana Amanat, the co-creator of Ms. Marvel’s character and a writer/producer of the show, revealed to Mashable’s Alexis Nedd that some of the inspiration for Kamala’s YouTube channel and animated videos came from Iman Vellani’s real life Kamala Khan vibes on set.
“Iman Vellani makes her own videos. She was sending videos to us while we were on set. And we looked at that and were like, ‘How do we inject some of that personality and the fact that she creates stop motion videos.’ It was very much something that we’re like, ‘Yeah, a version of what Iman does should be in our show.’ ”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Rizwana Zafer, the culture intern at Mashable, had a more personal reception to the new show, “I can finally breathe a sigh of relief, Kamala Khan is the superhero we’ve been waiting for,” she said. “When I first learned that Kamala Khan would hit the small screen as Ms. Marvel, my joy was quickly followed by anxiety. As an Indian American Muslim woman, I was uncomfortably familiar with how South Asians and Muslims — and our culture — haven’t always been portrayed in the best light on television.
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel / Kamala Khan and Saagar Shaikh as Aamir in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Matt Lintz as Bruno and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel / Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel / Kamala Khan and Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan and Matthew Lintz as Bruno in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba; Matthew Lintz as Bruno, and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Mohan Kapur as Yusef and Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
“The first episode of Ms. Marvel is a pleasant surprise, beautifully weaving in aspects of South Asian culture and Islam into Khan’s daily life. While I still wish that I could’ve had a Ms. Marvel to look up to when I was younger, I’m glad that South Asian and Muslim teens will finally get to see a superhero that looks like them.”
But what of the 19-year-old acting debutant herself? How heavy was the burden of the first Muslim superhero for Iman Vellani? She told Variety’s Angelique Jackson that the advice she received from Marvel leadership was simply to be herself. “They’re like, ‘You don’t go to work thinking that you’re the first Muslim superhero; you just go to work and have fun,’ ” Vellani recalls.
“That’s what I keep telling myself: I don’t really have to go out of my way and advocate for Muslim and Pakistani representation,” she explains. “This is one story of one girl. We cannot represent all two billion Muslims and South Asians, but this is definitely a good start.”
That aversion to the spoon-feeding of South Asian culture was a thread throughout Ms. Marvel, as Ali explained, “I am very wary of justification, of pointing at things and explaining very overtly. I’d much rather it come from a place of it’s just who she is.
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan and Matt Lintz as Bruno Carrelli in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Rish Shah as Kamran and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
“The celebrations and the events that we see, and the way that she interacts with elements of the community, it’s the day-to-day life of an American girl,” he added.
Travina Springer as Tyesha and Saagar Shaikh as Aamir in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia, Matt Lintz as Bruno, Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, and Anjali Bhimani as Auntie Ruby in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba and Mohan Kapur as Yusuf in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba, Matt Lintz as Bruno, Yasmeen Fletcher as Nakia, Saagar Shaikh as Aamir, and Travina Springer as Tyesha in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
The edict came from the very top as chief creative officer Kevin Feige expressed no concern about alienating non-Muslim audiences or people who aren’t South Asian with the show’s detailed cultural references. Instead, they fully embraced the nuanced perspective.
The approach presents an opportunity for curious fans to get an education about another culture while also being entertained. “We’re not trying to bash it over the head. We’re showcasing a different aspect of a lived experience,” adds Amanat. “But, ultimately, we’re telling sort of a nerdy, fun fan story about a young woman coming of age.”
Aramis Knight as Red Dagger/Kareem and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Saagar Shaikh as Aamir and Travina Springer as Tyesha in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Aramis Knight as Red Dagger/Kareem and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Vardah Aziz as Zainab and Asfandyar Khan as Owais in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Aramis Knight as Red Dagger/Kareem in “Ms. Marvel.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Want more? Check out this VFX breakdown from Digital Domain for the Marvel Studios hit series Ms. Marvel.
Digital Domain VFX Supervisor Aladino Debert and his talented team of artists successfully brought the comic book hero and her superpowers to life. Building on the new origins, artists at Digital Domain designed a unique look for Kamala Khan’s powers featuring a blue-ish purple crystalline manifestation that radiated energy, highlighted by an internal luminescence, created in Houdini.
The team also created several environments including the crowded train station set on the eve of the infamous Partition of India, creating several digital trains, crowds in period-appropriate clothing, and smoke to bring it all to life. Additionally, Aladino and his team were responsible for the fight sequence in the final episode. For this sequence, the team developed the look for Kamran’s damaging powers, Ms. Marvel’s giant, hard-light hands, digital debris, partial digidoubles of Kamran and Ms. Marvel, and more.
The Digital Domain team was also responsible for the iconic closing scene, which appeared in the series’ poster where Ms. Marvel sits on a lamppost and looks out over the city as her hair blows in the wind:
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“Dark Winds:” Developing a New (Overdue) Detective Genre
AMC’s “Dark Winds,” based on the book series by Tony Hillerman and executive produced by Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin, is part of a mini-boom of Native American content. Cr: AMC
The entertainment industry’s own flavor of reparations to the Native American have been meager, to say the least, but now AMC’s Dark Winds is providing succor and a superb detective series all at the same time. The episodic series, which is now available on AMC and AMC+ with the first episode available for free in certain territories on the AMC YouTube channel, has a rare 100% rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes and has deservedly been greenlit for season two while season one is still airing.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Rebecca Keegan even recognizes Dark Winds as part of a mini-boom of Native American content, alongside “…season two of Reservation Dogs, the Indigenous teen comedy Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi created for FX on Hulu, and season two of the Peacock sitcom Rutherford Falls, co-created by Navajo showrunner Sierra Teller Ornelas with Ed Helms and Mike Schur.”
To underscore the zeitgeist, this year’s Sundance Film Festival programmed 15 projects by Indigenous artists.
Dark Winds has deeper links with Sundance and the Sundance Kid himself as Robert Redford is one of the Executive Producers — he bought the rights to the original Tony Hillerman books back in the ‘80s (Hillerman died in 2008). Hillerman had tried to sell his books to Hollywood as they reached bestseller status. He ended up selling the rights to the Leaphorn character to an independent producer who never made a film. Fortunately, as the studio had never actually made anything, the rights reverted to Hillerman, who promptly sold them to Redford.
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee and Jessica Matten as Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
But even Hillerman’s initial play for a publishing deal served up problems with his core idea, as the author told TheLos Angeles Times in 2002. When he pitched his first Joe Leaphorn book to an agent, “She told me the only chance of selling it was to get rid of all the Indian stuff — it slowed down the book. I told her that was the reason I was writing the book.”
https://youtu.be/b_PpnseZIjI
Many years later Dark Winds had added Games of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin to the executive producer roster — he was an old friend of the author. It was the Redford and Martin dual approach that finally got the show over the line and produced and made, mostly by indigenous talent.
“George and I felt strongly about this point,” Redford noted of the project’s reliance on Indigenous talent. “You want to honor the culture by getting it right, and who better to do that?”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
As a master weaver of plots himself, Martin was only too keen to support the filming of the books. As he pointed out, at their heart you still had classic whodunits. “Someone is found dead, and the detectives have to figure out who did it. But the biggest thing really was the setting.
Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Amelia Rico as Ada Growing Thunder in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Elva Guerra as Sally Growing Thunder in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
“It’s another world, and Tony brought you into that world and into the Navajo culture and the culture of the other Indian tribes in the area.”
AV Club reviewer Saloni Gajjar also caught the show’s caliber and places it among the very best of recent detective shows. “Zahn McClarnon plays Joe Leaphorn, a quiet and troubled police officer who’s burdened with solving a hometown tragedy. Similar to Mare of Easttown and just about every Nordic noir show, this one centers on Leaphorn navigating personal and professional crises.”
Executive Producer Chris Eyre and Kiowa Gordon on the set of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Executive Producer Chris Eyre on the set of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Executive Producer Chris Eyre and Jessica Matten on the set of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Zahn McClarnon on the set of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Tatiana Hullender at Screen Rant lays out the film’s synopsis. “Set in 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley, Dark Winds follows Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Tribal Police as he is besieged by a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. The closer he digs to the truth, the more he exposes the wounds of his past. He is joined on this journey by his new deputy, Jim Chee. Chee, too, has old scores to settle from his youth on the reservation. Together, the two men battle the forces of evil, each other and their own personal demons on the path to salvation.”
Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn and Elva Guerra as Sally Growing Thunder in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn and Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Rainn Wilson as Devoted Dan in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Lepahorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
With a full Native American writing room, there’s no surprise that past historical crimes are called out. Television critic Mike Hale lists season one’s targets in his review for The New York Times: “In addition to the inescapable themes of economic and judicial inequality, the story ties in the involuntary sterilizations of Indigenous women and the shipping out of children to oppressive white boarding schools.”
Writer/creator/executive producer Graham Roland and director/executive producer Chris Eyre (of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes) told Dan Girolamo at Digital Trends about the importance of Native American representation. Eyre commented, “For me, it was everything to have that air of authenticity to it because point of view is so important to storytelling. And I think that audiences appreciate seeing it from a point of view that it could be in.
Jeremia Bitsui as Hoski and Eugene Braverock as Frank Nakai in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Eugene Braverock as Frank Nakai and Rob Tepper as Pete Samuels in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Jonathan Adams as Lester McGinnis in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
“It’s been kind of strange that Native people haven’t governed their own voice in mass media for this time, 120 years of film and television,” Eyre said. “So it’s long overdue.”
“There was nobody that we talked to that did not know about the book series or Tony Hillerman,” says Roland of early research trips he made to the Navajo nation. “For the most part, they were very positive. The younger generation, their parents had maybe read it or they had heard of it, but they weren’t really familiar with the stories.”
Rolling Stone’s reviewer Alan Sepinwall looks forward to seeing much more of Leaphorn and especially the mystical backdrop as the provenance is already there. On the whole, the experience of getting to traverse those desert highways, dusty hills, and other corners of this vast, beautiful, dangerous place — and to do it with these rich characters embodied by this excellent cast — makes this a terrific first season.
Makena Ann Hullinger as Nanobah and Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Jessica Matten as Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito and Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Jessica Matten as Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn and Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: AMC
“There are still plenty of books in the series to adapt, even before we get to the ones Anne Hillerman wrote following her father’s death,” he writes. “So hopefully, this is the beginning of a long stay in this world — and yet another step towards shows like Dark Winds and its summer peers not feeling like refreshing novelties, but like expected, excellent parts of a more inclusive TV landscape.”
Eugene Braverock as Frank Nakai in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Natalie Benally as Dispatch Operator in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Jeremia Bitsui as Hoski in season 1 of “Dark Winds.” Cr: Michael Moriatis/AMC
You can watch the entire first episode for free (with certain territory restrictions) in the video below:
Want more? The Dark Winds cast discusses the impact of having an entirely Native American writers room, and how important it is to have authentic representation of indigenous peoples on television:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Kendrick Lamar headlined the final night of Glastonbury 2022. Videol courtesy of BBC Music.
If all of the world is a stage, then the world was watching Glastonbury this weekend. At least it felt that way in the UK, where public service broadcasters gave viewers and radio listeners wall-to-wall coverage of the three-day festival.
The Glasto vibe has always been strong (the event is hosted on a farm near mystic ley lines, after all), but has been amped up in recent years to successfully encompass a broad swathe of popular music, from jazz and rap to metal and soul.
https://youtu.be/QWXW7uITlcg
The demand for the communality of crowds has been back with a vengeance this summer with artists like Harry Styles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Billie Eilish playing packed stadium gigs across the UK.
The zenith of this trend was the Glastonbury Festival, which played host to more than 80 acts to 200,000 people live and millions more at home.
Headline acts, including Billie Eilish and Paul McCartney, agreed to play the festival for a fraction of the fee they could command elsewhere. Emily Eavis, a co-organizer of the event, revealed that the festival’s performers are typically paid less than 10% of what they’d usually get elsewhere. At Coachella, for example, Beyonce was reputedly paid $4 million to appear in 2018. Beyonce played Glasto in 2011.
BBC presenter and DJ Jo Whiley described the experience to Variety’s Mark Sutherland: “Take Coachella, multiple it by a thousand, add several different dimensions and put it in multi-color… Then you might have a grasp of what Glastonbury is all about.”
Among the acts this year were Olivia Rodrigo, Diana Ross, Lorde, and Pet Shop Boys, with appearances by Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and country and bluegrass star Alison Krauss. Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen also duetted with Macca.
You’d like to think the stars do this because they want to be part of a unique communal experience. There’s an element of that to be sure. Another reason is the boost BBC coverage can give to future sales of tour dates and streaming airplay.
“These days, artists sign up to be at Glastonbury with the BBC coverage at the back of their minds,” Alison Howe, executive producer for BBC Studios, says to Sutherland. “People want to be part of it.”
After the last pre-pandemic event in 2019, huge surges in sales and streams followed for the likes of The Killers, The Cure, Lizzo and Kylie Minogue.
Each year the broadcaster takes it upon itself to record or live stream more of the show than ever before. This year, BBC produced live coverage of the main Pyramid stage in 4K UHD HDR and a live stream of various acts that were performing on different stages at the same time through its iPlayer online service.
Kendrick Lamar headlined the final night of Glastonbury 2022, closing his set with the words, “They judge you, they judged Christ, Godspeed for women’s rights.” Cr: Getty Images/Samir Hussein
“We’re really hopeful that at night when you look out over the crowd when the headline act is on, [the UHD] will really define a bit more what people at the event are seeing,” explained Howe to Televisual’s Pippa Considine. “Not just the detail on stage, but also the detail in the environment.”
BBC plans for more stages to get the UHD treatment in future. In 2017, the corporation and Glastonbury announced a broadcast deal through 2022, with an announcement expected that this longstanding partnership will be extended.
Robe Lights Up Glastonbury 2022
By Abby Spessard
The Glastonbury Festival celebrated its glorious 50th anniversary in June 2022 following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. Working alongside Arcadia, The Park, and BBC Introducing, moving light manufacturer Robe was involved in creating a spectacular array of visual elements across multiple stages, including a flame-throwing, laser-shooting spider.
Arcadia Spider
The Arcadia Spider made a triumphant return to the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Known for creating fantastical, over-the-top environments for live performances, Arcadia was founded by creative director Pip Rush and technical director Bert Cole. The company’s flame-throwing, laser-shooting spider is one of the most ambitious and enduringly popular of these environments, returning to the festival for the first time since 2017.
“The spider has so much history that we felt it was right and very appropriate to bring it back for the 50th Glasto,” Rush says.
Robe has been consistently featured on Arcadia shows over the years, but the objective for this year was to “mix it up and do something different, swapping out some of the older elements to keep the light show fresh and contemporary,” the company states. The Spider, made from recycled military and industrial machinery parts, was equipped with 18 Robe Pointes, nine Robe Spiider LED wash beams, and 12 of Robe’s new iPointe65 luminaires.
Lighting was designed by Dave Cohen from MIRRAD, and coordinated by Arcadia’s head of lighting, Katie Davies. Cohen collaborated with Rush on the Spider’s overall show lighting aesthetic this year, and ran lighting fully live each night for the mega-mix of DJ sets, which included an extensive range of genres from all around the world including acts like Carl Cox, Calvin Harris, Camelphat, Groove Armada, Chase & Status, and numerous others, attracting audiences of up to 60,000 across Glasto’s three main nights of music.
The Park Stage
The BBC introducing Stage featured production lighting design by Alex Merrett programmed and operated by Callam Thom and Will Owen. Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
SWG Events has supplied The Park stage with audio and lighting since its inception in 2007. Famous for its ribbon tower and panoramic views of the site, The Park is a natural amphitheater located on the ground above the Spider. As the host of a high-profile line up — including Jessie Ware, Wet Leg, The Avalanches, and Four Tet — “the production lighting design is crafted to satisfy all riders and offer a great show for artists lit with the house rig.”
Designed by SWG’s head of lighting, Alex Merrett, and facilitated on-site by production manager Mark Bott, the set employed 12 Robe Spiiders, 12 MegaPointes, 24 LEDBeam 150s, and 12 LEDBeam 350s, all of which were chosen for their versatility. Four Tet’s lighting director Ed Warren, known for his cutting-edge creative approach, made the most of the MegaPointes — selected for their signature beam, gobo and prism looks — along with five large mirror balls.
Tom Campbell, 2022 TPi Award winner for Lightning Designer of the Year, lit up The Parks stage for Arlo Parks. “This was a very special show for everyone involved,” he said. “We took a creative decision to focus on scenic and video elements this summer so it was a welcome sight to see the house rig full of Robe products as I know what they can bring to a show!”
BBC Introducing
SWG Events has supplied The Park stage with audio and lighting since its inception in 2007. Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Cr: Charlie Raven & Sarah Ginn (Arcadia)/Robe
Robe also worked with SWG Events to once again provide the lighting kit for the BBC introducing Stage, which featured production lighting design by Alex Merrett programmed and operated by Callam Thom and Will Owen.
This year’s rig included eight Robe LEDBeam 150s, 16 x LEDBeam 350s, four PATT 2013s and six Pointes, “all of which made a big impact and added color and movement to the various artists appearing on this popular stage,” the company states.
“The Pointes were utilized to deliver hard beam effects and classic prisms and break-ups to contrast with the softer LED Beams,” Thom details. The PATTs were “beautifully scenic in their own right,” he notes, commenting that they were “perfect” for the more intimate moments and for closing down the stage space.
Both Thom and Owen showed an appreciation for Robe’s LEDBeam 350’s wide zoom, which make the fixtures “a good, solid, adaptable choice for creating anything from fat beams to wide strobes to controlled front light and even a medium wash.”
It’s not just performers using Glastonbury as a world stage. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and 19-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg both addressed the televisual audience in unscheduled speeches, while several other artists chose to vocalize their anger and defiance against the US Supreme Court ruling on the right to abortion.
Kendrick Lamar, who headlined Sunday’s performance, was perhaps the most striking. He signed off the end of his set repeating the words, “They judge you, they judged Christ, Godspeed for women’s rights.”
https://youtu.be/KRb3HDA2DyE
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“We Met in Virtual Reality:” A Very Different Kind of VR Filmmaking
Seeking to create a new form of immersive global filmmaking, director Joe Hunting filmed his documentary feature inside the metaverse. Jenny and DustBunny in “We Met in Virtual Reality.” Cr: Sundance Institute
For VR to reach the critical mass needed to convince a mass market, it needs an accessible — which means affordable — playground. Facebook’s billion dollar Oculus buy-out now seems like one of those playgrounds but is still out of the reach of the many.
Facebook’s change of name to Meta points the company’s way forward but the real players already living in the metaverse are wary of such corporate seduction; they just want to live a life out of the bounds of a physical one.
It’s these players who are the subject of a new documentary called We Met In Virtual Reality. For director Joe Hunting, the only way of filming such a show was to shoot it within the metaverse and let the inhabitants tell their own stories.
Wired commented in its review that the documentary was never meant to be a denouncement of corporate maneuvering but to act as a mirror on where this second life is at the moment; for all intents and purposes it’s a classic documentary approach.
“This isn’t a diatribe on the corporate takeover of digital spaces. Instead, it’s about showcasing the people in the small progressive communities that have built social VR into what it is. We Met in Virtual Reality is also a glimpse into the burgeoning metaverse at a time when folks needed it most.”
From “We Met in Virtual Reality,” courtesy of the Sundance Institute, HBO
Hunting started making his film inside of Social VR in 2018, he told Filmmaker Magazine, and his timing was perfect for witnessing the catalyst that the pandemic accorded to this burgeoning trend.
“It was obvious to me that the experimental works I was already creating had huge potential to invent a new form of immersive global filmmaking, inside social VR,” he said. “The beauty of this film is that I didn’t have to change my course, I just had to trust the concept and my solid virtual production methods.
“Social VR is a constantly changing, fluid place aesthetically, so I had a freedom to play in different forms while keeping to real world cinematic techniques to ground each of the protagonists’ distinct tones and stories.”
Director Joe Hunting, Jenny, DustBunny, and Toaster with moderator Ash Hoyle participate in a Q&A session following the virtual premiere of “We Met in Virtual Reality” at the 2022 Sundance Festival. Cr: Sundance Institute
As Hunting stated in a Q&A with Filmmaker Magazine, not changing his course meant relying on his existing documentary instincts. He trained his virtual camera on a range of activities, including pool games, dances and educational classes to tell the stories of a number of couples who met in VR during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“The visual direction of the documentary is very handmade, with a distinct camera presence, which I wanted to have personal control over to retain an intimate sensibility with the camera’s relationship to the subjects.
“Logistically, the film is pioneering new virtual camera technology inside social VR, which I trained myself to operate over a year. This form of cinematography is in its infancy.”
DustBunny and Toaster in director Joe Hunting’s documentary feature, “We Met in Virtual Reality.” Cr: Sundance Institute
Hunting shot the entire documentary inside VRChat using VRCLens, a cinematic-quality virtual camera filter system created specifically for VRChat. He wanted to achieve a grounded sense of presence and realism inside virtual reality, with the intent to lead audiences into a natural watching experience on par with films shot in the physical world.
“We Met in Virtual Reality” director Joe Hunting. Cr: Joe Hunting/Sundance Institute
“The realization to direct through a realist lens came from the desire to represent the people of VR as the people see each other and speak from a place other than the outside looking in,” he says.
But practically, what was the capture of the VR footage like? “The biggest challenge with the cinematography was creating naturalistic movement. People inside VR move extremely fast and unpredictably, so ensuring I was wholly listening to a moment and directing subjects to physically move in their spaces rather than using controllers was a constant concern.
“The aesthetic of social VR is naturally disjointed and confusing, so embracing imperfection was important to me when overcoming hurdles like movement. Getting physically comfortable to shoot in VR for over 4 hours was a challenge too!”
There are no visual effects in We Met in Virtual Reality; everything seen is actually happening in the virtual world. The film was heavily color corrected and graded in post the same as a physical documentary would have been. “The color of the final picture is much more vibrant and warm compared to the raw material, as it was important to me that VR felt like a euphoric and cozy place to be,” Hunting said.
From “We Met in Virtual Reality,” cr: Sundance Institute, HBO
The lighting of a scene was dependent on the virtual world Hunting was shooting in, which constantly varied. “The only situations I really exploited light artistically were when using real-time shadows to build the sense of realism and to help define movement in dance.
“The most difficult scene to shoot was capturing multiple New Years celebrations in VR. It was very easy to get lost in the hilarity you can expect from a massive VR party, but I overcame feeling overwhelmed by focusing on capturing still compositions and patiently embracing the chaos instead of avoiding it.”
Director Joe Hunting, Jenny, DustBunny, and Toaster during a Q&A session following the virtual premiere of “We Met in Virtual Reality” at the 2022 Sundance Festival. Cr: Sundance Institute
Hunting’s goal, then, was to show “what being present in VR is truly like.” People discuss deaths in their families, struggles with addiction, and identity. If ever there was an argument for virtual reality still being reality, this is it. Hunting’s film makes the case that all those dreamers who envision a digital world that brings people together might be on to something.
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“Irma Vep:” A Series About Making a Movie (That’s Also a Remake) (and, Yes, It’s Meta)
From HBO’s “Irma Vep”
Olivier Assayas’s second crack at “Irma Vep” for HBO Max shows that while the movie industry has changed radically, the people who make these films have not. Cr: Warner Media
Olivier Assayas’s second crack at Irma Vep had its world premiere as an official selection at Cannes this year. It’s now on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. No surprise then that the questions for him on La Croisette this year were peppered with queries on why he had even repeated the feat.
Back in 1996 the writer-director had made a film about the same subject with the same title. Charles Bramesco from Decider harkens back to the movie with fondness. “The French filmmaking great Olivier Assayas took a bite out of show business in 1996 with Irma Vep, a meta-masterpiece that uses a production remaking a silent thriller serial as a vessel for a state-of-the-industry address.”
Alicia Vikander as Mira in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Alicia Vikander as Mira in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
It was part comedy, part satire of the film industry — and had a lot to say about both the impact of cinema and the conflicts between creativity and commerce.
The French silent movie serial that inspired Assayas was called The Vampires, made in 1916. It was about an organization of criminals who terrorized Paris and called themselves The Vampires.
Alicia Vikander as Mira and Jeanne Balibar as Zoe in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
NPR’s David Bianculli asks and answers his own question about the new 2022 episodic version. “The level of creativity in the 1996 Irma Vep movie was in itself dazzling. So why would that film’s creator and director, more than 25 years later, feel the need to revisit his own story?
“Based on the first four episodes of HBO’s Irma Vep, the answer is clear: The movie industry has changed radically in the interim — but the types of people making those films have not. And a TV miniseries, with more time to pursue subplots and enrich characters, makes this new Irma Vep even better than the original.”
Lars Eidinger as Gottfried in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Alicia Vikander as Mira and Devon Ross as Regina in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Vincent Macaigne as René Vidal in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
AnOther Magazine’s Patrick Sproull, noting that Assayas prefers to work without preconceived ideas about his projects, asked the director if he approached Irma Vep the same way. “This was a textbook case,” Assayas told him, “I had no idea where I was heading.”
But he had supportive partners, HBO and A24, that gave him freedom to run with even his wildest ideas. “All the doors were open and things that would have seemed out of reach when I made the original film all of a sudden were possible.”
Vincent Macaigne as René Vidal and Vincent Lacoste as Edmond Lagrange in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
It’s been about 25 years since he made the original Irma Vep, Assayas recalls, and while his original film is “how a modern filmmaker would translate Louis Feuillade’s work in modern terms,” he says this new take has more layers.
“My own personal connection to this film became a layer in this story… All of a sudden, I was part of the story and it shed a light on something that has always been extremely important and meaningful for me which is the mix between reality and filmmaking,” he says. “It was so interconnected it became even painful at moments when I started writing those scenes, and it’s really Musidora and the autobiographical thread that carried me, and in the end, [these] were the dynamics for the series.”
Alicia Vikander as Mira and Devon Ross as Regina in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Steve Greene from IndieWire refreshes the story’s plot and is another fan of the new serial. “American actress Mira (Alicia Vikander), fresh off of a press tour for a massive blockbuster, finds herself settling into the main role in a modern remake of seminal early 20th century French serial Les Vampires.
“Assayas brings a more clear-eyed approach to this Irma Vep series. It becomes a story about how to care without being precious, something that extends far beyond these characters’ on-set lives. Vikander deftly treads a delicate line between showing Mira at a certain remove (from friends, exes, co-stars, and employees) without ever coming across as completely checked out.
Vincent Lacoste as Edmond Lagrange in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
“Also expanded for this miniseries are the various subplots,” adds Bianculli. “Actors who want meatier roles, producers with other motives or deals in play, and a Hollywood agent, who’s pushing Mira to star in a new superhero movie, as a female Silver Surfer.
“It’s often very funny, but somehow it all seems believable. So do all the romantic conflicts connecting the on-camera stars and their supporting assistants and crew members. It’s like a show-business version of Downton Abbey, with the upstairs and downstairs folks constantly shifting power roles.”
The Atlantic’s Shirley Li calls Irma Vep “the most meta show currently on TV. It has the kind of high-concept premise that would confuse even its own characters.
“They’re members of a TV production themselves, but they can’t agree on the nature of what they’re making. One character suggests that they’re creating a long movie broken up into parts — like the way novels used to be published. Another character argues that they’re doing a TV show that’s essentially just content… industrial entertainment ruled by algorithms.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
“But it’s accessible and self-aware in how it giddily honors and skewers the modern entertainment industry.” There’s very modern talk about global box-office blockbusters and intimacy coordinators — but all of it is presented not only with wit, but with genuine affection.
Much of the humor is in the amusing mundanity of life behind the scenes of Irma Vep as Li observes, “Irma Vep, the show within the show, is shot on location in Paris, but Assayas rarely displays the glamorous side of the city, preferring to show hotel room interiors, trailers, and on-set facades over tourist destinations.
Alicia Vikander as Mira in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Alicia Vikander as Mira in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Alicia Vikander as Mira in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
“Amid the discussions of what qualifies as cinema, conversations about prosaic concerns — budgets, schedules, whether the show will be at all ‘binge-worthy’ — get woven in. As if to point out the workaday air of Irma Vep, a brief scene even features a group of background actors discussing how Emily in Paris, the flashy Netflix series, provided ‘yummy’ food on set. ‘Makes such a difference,’ one of them marvels.”
Fala Chen as Cynthia Keng in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Hyperallergic’s Dan Schindel comments that the humor and sly pop culture references that riddle Irma Vep are definitely made for a specific audience, “mainly a certain crowd of ardent cinephiles.” But while everyone watching the series may not fully grasp some of the jokes and asides, the interjections play into the meta-narrative.
Schindel writes that Irma Vep “grows more complex with each episode, less a deepening of a rabbit hole than an excavation of a whole rabbit warren.” After all, the series is not just a redo of the original film, but also a sequel of sorts.
“This isn’t the kind of remake that presumes the nonexistence of its predecessor; we learn that in the universe of the miniseries, Vidal previously made a film about an abortive attempt at a Les Vampires remake in the ’90s,” he recounts. “And that he cast a Hong Kong superstar to lead it. And that he subsequently married her, only for the marriage to fall apart a few years later — just as what happened between Assayas and Cheung after Irma Vep.”
Carrie Brownstein as Zelda in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Calling Irma Vep “one of the most divorced works” he’s ever seen, Schindel notes that as the series progresses, “Vidal’s dialogue with his therapist about why he’s declined to again cast an Asian actress in the lead role feels like Assayas himself commenting on his artistic process. More poignantly, Vidal’s spoken regrets about the relationship feel like the director channeling his real-life feelings directly to the screen.”
Fala Chen as Cynthia Keng in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Lars Eidinger as Gottfried in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Vincent Lacoste as Edmond Lagrange in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Assayas himself deals with the “why” question in simpler terms when asked by Vulture’s Rachel Handler. “In many ways, a series has become the dominant format recently in filmmaking. I always thought it was not really for me. I always thought that series weren’t exactly my style, that I was more attached to movies and the big screen, but when I started wondering what could be a series for me, I thought maybe there’s a way that if I function with the right people and have the same kind of freedom I have while making my movies, maybe it’s worth giving it a shot. Doing something long format versus something closer to a short story.
Vincent Macaigne as René Vidal in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
Vincent Macaigne as René Vidal in writer/director Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Cr: Warner Media
“The whole point of making a series out of Irma Vep was to go two steps further on themes I had only toyed with in the original. There are a lot of themes that I expanded. But I always use elements that were present in the original. I had space and time to push them much further.”
Elisabeth Vincentelli from The New York Times tries to classify the new show. “Most shows fall within recognizable categories: original stories, spinoffs, docudramas or, increasingly, reboots and revivals. Then there is Irma Vep. Olivier Assayas’s new HBO series is more like a braid in which the past and the present are inextricably intertwined.”
But the Li concludes her review with a note of caution. “With so much focus on the mechanics of moviemaking, the show, like the 1996 film, risks becoming too esoteric. But Irma Vep exhibits a pleasurable lightness. The conversations between characters may focus on, say, how studios care only about audience needs these days, but the rhythm of such chatter reveals the way everyone on set, not just the actors, perform to some degree.”
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Myths, Mists, Monsters: Director of Photography David Raedeker on “The Essex Serpent”
Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
There’s a lot of mud in The Essex Serpent, sometimes on screen, mostly underfoot. It sticks to the characters, sucking them into the landscape, preventing their escape. For the filmmakers this was as much a practical problem as it was a metaphor for the period tale of a London widow Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes) who investigate reports of a mythical serpent on the coast to the East of London in the county of Essex.
“In the Essex marshes the tides are extreme,” says director of photography David Raedeker, BSC. “Sometimes we had windows of no more than an hour on a dry patch before we had to get off or be completely covered in water. There was a lot of wind too, up to 50 mph at times. No monitor up would stand up in that. We had freezing actors and crew stuck in the mud.”
Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Frank Dillane in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
The six-part romantic drama is set in Victorian England and adapted by See-Saw Films from Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel for Apple TV+. It co-stars Tom Hiddleston as the local vicar who refuses to believe in the serpent, let alone that it’s an ill omen. When tragedy strikes, Cora is accused of attracting the creature.
“We discussed the strong gothic element to this story,” the DP says. “We wanted this kind of comparison visually between the old and the new, between London as the seat of the new industrial age and the religious hinterland of Essex.”
An ARRI Alexa LF with DNA lenses vintages were used take the harshness off the sensor. “It’s very much a dream-like story, not crystal clear, almost like a vintage photograph,” he says.
They studied photography of the period including some of the first color plates as part of a 50-page Look Bible developed between the heads of department and involving Rob Farris, director of post production at London house Goldcrest. They developed LUTs to contrast scenes set in London with those in Essex.
In prep, Raedeker tested Steadicam and gimbals against massive wind machines blow straight into the camera. The conditions necessitated some handheld work since even a Steadicam would have blown out of position.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
“We did a lot of walk and talk shots which we don’t want to be jerky but when you’re handheld on that terrain was tricky so we used a gimbal for those,” he says.
“I wanted to get more into the mud but it was very difficult. You’d sink almost up to your chest if you waded in. I had huge shoes like moon boots to walk on it so we didn’t have the time in between the tides to get into position and do complex setups.”
Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Clémence Poésy in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
They filmed some scenes on an island with a small hut that was only accessible by boat or by walking two hours between tides.
“It was hard to get to and it meant we could only take limited crew numbers. All around us was mud. You couldn’t leave the grass otherwise you became quite literally stuck in the mud.”
The scenes in Essex were largely shot with natural light with additional battery powered lamps. There was no way they could cart a generator over the mud nor stabilize any form of large lighting kit on gibs or cherry pickers.
After shooting on location in Essex between February and April 2021, the team moved to studios in north London for interiors and additional exterior work in places Southwark and Islington.
“We looked for building exteriors with red brick because we wanted to emphasize red, the color of blood,” Raedeker says. “London is designed to look heavier and to lean into reds and blacks. The idea is that we feel the suffocating influence of industrialization and the machinery of progress and the work ethic.
Another expression of this is the character Luke Garrett (Frank Dillane) who is a doctor and who serves to illustrate the advance of medicine versus superstition.
Caspar Griffiths in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Clémence Poésy and Dixie Egerickx in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes and Frank Dillane in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes and Hayley Squires in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
“To reflect Cora’s subjective point of view we don’t show London skies until the end, whereas Essex is framed for big skies.”
That was clearly different on the sound stage. “I treat a studio like a location. I think about the time of day and where the sun would be at that point to give it this naturalism. We used lamps to replicate sunlight, mainly soft illuminations.”
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Clémence Poésy in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Hayley Squires and Frank Dillane in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Lily-Rose Aslandogdu in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamael Westman in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Despite the conditions, “weather rarely ‘reads’ strongly on screen,” he says. “Even when it rains it has to pour buckets to really show on camera and the weather in Essex, while foul at times, didn’t show up as much as wanted it to.”
For the opening scene of episode one, for example, the weather was just too clement when they originally shot it. “We needed the tide to be right, the weather to be overcast to make it easier for VFX to add in fog. But we had blazing sun.”
For this reason, they returned a few months later and reshoot the scene.
Raedeker credits his camera team for helping him on this unusually arduous shoot including focus puller Luke Cairns, loader Oliver Hallam, Grip Sam Reeves and Gaffer Sol Saihati.
Dixie Egerickx, Tom Hiddleston and Ryan Reffell in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ryan Reffell and Clémence Poésy in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Frank Dillane and Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dixie Egerickx in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamael Westman and Hayley Squires in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tom Hiddleston in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Clémence Poésy in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
Caspar Griffiths and Claire Danes in “The Essex Serpent.” Cr: Apple TV+
“We had a really strong team. All the camera gear was in rucksacks to protect against the elements and every eventuality and it never broke down once.
“There were times when operating handheld I had to run backwards and Sam was there to guide me in the right direction — not every grip would have done that.”
They were so good Raedeker took them to his next job, shooting BBC four-part drama Best Interests, starring Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen.
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Under the Volcano(es): How Sara Dosa Found a “Fire of Love”
Director Sara Dosa gathered more than 20 hours of 16mm footage shot by French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft for “Fire of Love,” which documents not only the duo’s work and relationship but also their connection with the volcano and nature itself. Cr: Sundance Institute
Sara Dosa, director of the documentary Fire of Love, was lucky enough to gather more than 20 hours of original 16mm film footage shot by French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft. But she had a problem with the re-telling of the story: namely, how to elevate the special nature of their relationship when there was only ever one of them in a shot as they took turns behind the camera.
“Fire of Love” director Sara Dosa. Cr: Sundance Institute
“But as I learned about them,” Dosa said, “I became completely hooked on the nature of their relationship — it wasn’t just Maurice and Katia in a relationship, it was almost a love triangle between the two of them and the volcanoes.
“That set me on a path of inquiry about so many things: the human relationship with nature; the sentience of nature; creation; destruction; love; life; and meaning.”
Dosa’s editors, Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput, decided to create love imagery from the volcanic footage itself. “We have some scenes that feel explosive and speak to the passion and ecstatic fullness of one’s heart,” she said.
“We have one scene that’s a bit erotic — subtly and playfully. And of course, we have scenes that are dangerous and foreboding that we thought spoke to the risks that one takes when you fall in love.”
Volcanoes became their language for telling a love story, and Dosa thought that was truer to Katia and Maurice’s story than if you ever actually saw them kiss.
Ironically, Casper and Chaput discovered that many of their edit goals were derived from the limitations of the footage.
“Shot on 16mm, the shooting is very different than in the digital era. The shots are short and precise in order to preserve their precious film stock, but they’re strewn across years of reels, out of order, and have been locked away for decades, and there’s no sync sound to the reels.”
Director Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love.” Cr: Sundance Institute
So, a big question surfaced: How do they turn this material into a cogent, compelling narrative infused with a sense of immediacy, as well as an accessible window into volcanology?
“With snap zooms galore, it seemed that they were likely influenced by the French New Wave filmmakers of their day, too. So we ultimately decided to lean into the limitations of the material as playfully as possible since the material seemed to support that approach.”
The 16mm footage that forms the basis of the movie is astounding even on a small screen, as, at one point, Katia perches on the mouth of an exploding void, insulated by aluminum and asbestos. It’s the kind of footage unthinkable then and even today without a drone to do the cinematographic work.
“The key was to allow ourselves to experiment a lot, just to figure out the formal (and not so formal) grammar of the film. Sara was always keen on trying things out and giving us plenty of leeway to do so. Over time, we honed a voice and style that reflected our goals.”
Maurice Krafft and Katia Krafft in director Sarah Dosa’s “Fire of Love.” Cr: Sundance Institute
Directed by Dosa and narrated by filmmaker and author Miranda July, this lyrical archival collage pulls from hundreds of hours of rare and never-before-seen footage and photographs shot by the Kraffts, channeling the humor, affection, and insatiable curiosity that was integral to their partnership.
The Sundance documentary was awarded Critics Pick by IndieWire, which glowingly described the film thusly: “At an economical 90-minute running time, Fire of Love packs a visual and emotional wallop, with enough close-ups on erupting volcanoes — one, at a point, is called ‘a bathtub with a hole in it, sowing death all around’ — to leave you slack-jawed, terrified, and awe-inspired.”
Dosa explained to Filmmaker Magazine how she chose the story of the Kraffts. “When the pandemic hit, it forced us to pivot. We thought an archival project that required no new shooting would be COVID-safe and were reminded of Katia and Maurice Krafft’s story, which we first came across on our last feature, The Seer & The Unseen.”
The pandemic had raised deeply personal questions that Dosa wanted to find answers to. The Krafft’s story held some of those keys. “Maurice and Katia’s own story became a vehicle through which I could wrestle with these ideas. I think the film perhaps became more emotionally resonant because we were all experiencing these questions in our personal life and infused those emotions into our film,” Dosa said.
“In this way, the pandemic prompted not just a reconsideration of the form of storytelling that I had relied upon in the past, but sparked a deeper contemplation into our creative process.”
Editors Jocelyne Chaput and Erin Casper, director Sara Dosa, and producers Shane Boris and Ina Fichman during the Q&A session following the virtual premiere of “Fire of Love.” Cr: Sundance Institute
Variety describes how early on in the film news of the Krafft’s death is introduced. “Early in the film, we learn something about them that makes us suck in our breath. Miranda July says, ‘It’s 1991. June 2. Tomorrow will be their last day.’ ”
“The two are headed for another volcano stakeout (of Mount Unzen in Japan), and it’s clear what we’re being told: that this is the one that killed them. That stunningly ominous fact sets the stakes for the entire movie.
“Maurice and Katia always knew they were risking their lives. In an early foray, the skin on Maurice’s leg was burned off by 140-degree mud — a baptism of fire. But from the start their mantra was (in Katia’s words), ‘Curiosity is stronger than fear.’ ”
This poetic, languorous (and award-winning) documentary features a family effort to rescue and heal black kites in Delhi as the city deals with social upheaval.
May 31, 2022
Memories, Meatloaf and Mel Brooks: Making ‟The Automat”
The late and lamented automat occupies something of a time warp to those that recognize the word. Maybe “time bubble” is more appropriate.
Perhaps a French phrase or lengthy German word that translates along the lines of “something from the past that is always in the future yet never arrives…” A Decopunk or Retrofuturism limbo. Hugh Ferriss and Norman Bel Geddes never die there.
Sky Captainmust certainly have an automat in it, where Jude Law might rendezvous with Angelina Jolie. Maybe in an unseen directors cut? The Shadow or LA Confidential must feature an automat in a scene!
Doris Day in “A Touch of Mink”
Alas, it seems that automats are missing from many films set in the High Automat Period (approximately 1920–1970).
Documenting the Automat
To rectify this great injustice, liberating the automat from the prison of our ambered memories is Lisa Hurwitz and her part documentary, part paean, The Automat.
It’s a fun look back at the ever-so-shiny cafeteria-diner hybrid, that seemed to be open 24 hours a day in big cities for all those behatted men and well-coiffed women to get a quick (and inexpensive) snack or meal; or just coffee. Oh, and actors/artists/writers hung out there, waiting for inspiration or fame.
The Automat is loaded with (now) elder New Yorkers, vets of Broadway and movies, who ate at automats and recall them warmly. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, and non-entertainment celebrities, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell appear.
Yes, that is a young Mel Brooks sipping coffee at an automat. Photo taken by an equally young Rob Reiner.
Many of the interviewees remember fondly their fellow diners, seated first-come/first-served egalitarian-style. Others recall certain foods or the chicory-laced coffee.
Besides the interviews, there is archival footage along with pictures of famous folk, such as celebrities returning from a night on Broadway, dressed to the nines, as they used to say.
Several descendants of the Horn and Hardart families, the owners of the eponymous chain that owned most American automats, provide information as well.
Documentary filmmakers are unleashing cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality to bring their projects to life. Gain insights into the making of these groundbreaking projects with these articles extracted from the NAB Amplify archives:
Though they initially appeared at the turn of the 20th century, automats looked “futuristic” with many embodying brightly lit, clean, polished metal, Art Deco and Streamline designs, with the standout detail being a bank of small windowed boxes, each offering a food treasure inside. A nickel or two was all that was needed to open the window and remove the dish. And if one stuck around and watched, a replacement item would “automatically” appear in the window momentarily. It was magic…
There was no wait staff to interface with though there was a cashier to provide nickels. Truth be told, there was a handful of people behind the windows pulling the strings in a “Wizard of Oz”-way.
Not surprisingly, automats delighted children. Not only was the whole operation cool, if you were tall enough, and lucky enough, your parents might give you some coins and let you go to the windows and serve yourself.
Sadly, the automat became passé and the last of the classic Horn & Hardart Automats closed in 1991. By that time they were mostly using vending machines rather than the freshly prepared food in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSwdUImmf8
If only Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” had featured an automat rather than a diner, things might have been different for the automat!
Making “The Automat”
Hurwitz initially launched a Kickstarter to fund the film, collecting over $55,000. She had actually authored a doctoral dissertation on the subject 20 years ago, and, ironically, she never ate at an automat.
Check out this WNYC interview with Hurwitz, discussing the film and the cultural significance of automats. As a bonus, listeners shared their own automat memories.
“Shining Girls:” A Story/Series With a Shifting Narrative
Murder mystery shows are a TV and streaming staple, so it takes something special to stand out.
Mare of Easttown, for example, wasn’t so much interested in whodunnit as an in-depth character study of depression and trauma. New Apple TV+ drama Shining Girls has a similar approach — a traumatized woman on the hunt for the man who assaulted her — but flips the switch by making her an unreliable narrator.
An unreliable narrator with only a brief memory of the attacker she’s searching for, Elizabeth Moss plays Kirby Mazarachi in “Shining Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Showrunner Silka Luisa adapted the series from the novel by Lauren Beukes and changed its structure if not it themes or genre-mash-up.
“[The book] stood out to me because it was a blend of genres,” Luisa explains to Creative Screenwriting. “It had serial killer, cold case, science fiction and mystery elements to it which made it so unique.
“I changed the structure of the novel which was split between the perpetrator Harper (Jamie Bell) and multiple female victims’ points of view – Each chapter in the novel was told from a different woman’s point of view.” Instead, Luisa was captivated by the distinct character of Kirby Mazrachi, “who was a survivor, both vulnerable and scared, but also moving forward with her life,” so she focused on her subjective viewpoint for the TV series.
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 1 of “Shining Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez in episode 1 of “Shining Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 1 of “Shining Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 1 of “Shining Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
The sci-fi part, and where the unreliable narrator comes in, is that Kirby (played by Elisabeth Moss, who also exec produces) appears to shift her perception of reality. Her memory is unreliable. She writes basic facts down in a diary, a bit like Memento. What has happened to Kirby, in fact, not the mechanics of finding the serial killer (who the audience knows is Jamie Bell’s Harper in the first few minutes) is the mystery at the heart of this show.
It’s a bold choice but Luisa is confident enough in the performances and the mystery to withhold the answers much longer than you’d expect.
Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez and Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 2 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamie Bell as Harper Curtis in episode 2 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi and Amy Brenneman as Rachel in episode 2 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi and Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez in episode 2 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
“For me, because you know who Harper is from the very beginning, that is not the mystery that you’re tracking. The mystery that you’re tracking is: Why is Kirby’s reality changing, and how is it connected to these murders?” she tells SlashFilm. “And a big part of writing the season was really understanding, ‘Okay, how much per each episode are we going to figure out? How long can you hold it where it’s exciting? Where does it become confusing?’ Navigating that clarity was definitely one of the challenges of the show.”
Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez and Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 3 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamie Bell as Harper Curtis in episode 3 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 3 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez and Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 3 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Some of this only became apparent in the edit where techniques like staying in a shot a little longer or cutting a couple of lines of dialogue can calibrate the suspense in such a fine-tuned way.
“How much are you going to know? It’s different for every audience member. There’s certain people who love to try and figure it out and anticipate. There’s others who just want to be along for the ride. I think we try to strike a balance where, for both kinds of viewers, it’s still going to be a fun show to watch.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
The show’s authenticity is aided by background research of what it was like to work at the Chicago Sun-Times (Kirby is a newspaper archivist who wears a Walkman while pulling out newspaper cuttings).
The ‘90s the nineties period itself (which is in vogue thanks to shows like Yellowjackets) “is recreated through crinkling papers, greasy diners, and rickety cars. Chicago’s red iron bridges, lakeside beaches,” says IndieWire.
Jamie Bell as Harper Curtis in episode 4 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi and Wagner Moura as Dan Velasquez in episode 4 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamie Bell as Harper Curtis in episode 4 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
Elisabeth Moss as Kirby Mazrachi in episode 4 of “Shing Girls.” Cr: Apple TV+
IndieWire also singles out the direction of Emmy-winner Michelle MacLaren who balances Kirby’s fractured perspective in a number of shrewd ways. For one, Kirby becomes more and more discerning as she investigates her assailant.
“When a recent murder mirrors what happened to her, the cops call Kirby in to identify a suspect. Only Kirby doesn’t remember him. All she remembers is what it felt like and his voice. It’s not much to go on, but her colleague at the Sun-Times, Dan Velazquez (a magnificently disheveled Wagner Moura), is determined to keep digging. Soon enough, they’re working as a team, trying to connect the dots between cases.”
How To “Be Anarchy:” Making Danny Boyle’s Punk Manifesto ‟Pistol”
“It’s so not the story that everybody wants to be told,” says Boyle, “but it is the story that should be told.”
It’s no coincide that FX’s Pistol punk miniseries arrives during Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.
(That’s a celebration of the UK’s monarch being on the throne for 70 years, and if you like that sort of thing, then good for you! If not, then in the UK, at least, we get a couple days’ holiday.)
In 1977, occasion of the queen’s Silver Jubilee, The Sex Pistol’s ‟God Save The Queen“ single was released, with the punk rockers’ reference to “the fascist regime” shocking the establishment.
The album from which it came, Never Mind The Bollocks, is a bone fide classic, #125 on Rolling Stones’ all time 500 list (per the 2021 update), even if that’s the last thing the band’s members would have wanted.
Now director Danny Boyle has helmed a miniseries about the band which ended in notorious front man John Ritchie AKA Sid Vicious’ death of an overdose after the (possible) murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
That the six-part series is made for Disney-owned FX may be one reason Johnny Rotten, one of the band’s original members, has refused to endorse the show; but that’s par for the course, and Boyle says wouldn’t have it any other way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhxwG0eCiE
“I want Johnny Rotten to attack it!” Boyle told The Guardian. “It’s so not the story that everybody wants to be told, but it is the story that should be told.”
Sex Pistols on the Big Screen
The Pistols’ story has already been made into the feature Sid and Nancy (starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb directed by Alex Cox), and The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle — orchestrated by the band’s manager Malcolm McLaren to claim the whole thing was a contrivance to make money.
It is based on guitarist Steve Jones’s autobiography, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, and stars Toby Wallace as Jones, Anson Boon as John Lyndon (Rotten), Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, and Emma Appleton as Spungen.
From left to right: Jacob Slater as Paul Cook, Anson Boon as John Lyon, Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Christian Lees as Glen Matlock CR: Miya Mizuno/FX
That meant taking an experimental approach to filming: “We would just run whole scenes, whole performances, without knowing if we had captured the ‘right’ shot or not. It’s everything you’ve been taught not to do.”
Before filming began, the actors playing the members of the Sex Pistols spent two months in “band camp,” with a daily routine of music lessons, vocal coaching and movement practice tutored by Karl Hyde and Rick Smith from the British electronic music group Underworld.
To keep some of that raw, DIY edge Boyle also decided not to do any postproduction work on the music. This was apparently a passion project for the director of Yesterday, a Beatles-soundtracked romantic comedy.
Anson Boon as John Lydon in Pistol Cr: Miya Mizuno/FX
“I am very music-driven, but I never imagined doing the Pistols,” he said. “I had followed John Lydon’s career closely, and the hostility he felt for the others wasn’t a secret.”
But after reading the script, Boyle immediately said “yes,” an answer he describes as “ridiculous since I didn’t even know if we would have the music, the most important thing.”
Lydon opposed both the use of the Sex Pistols’s music and the series itself, but eventually lost his court case when a judge ruled that the terms of a band agreement gave Cook and Jones a majority vote. Boyle said he had attempted to contact Lydon during the dispute. He added that he hoped the series would “reveal the genius and the humility” in the frontman.
Toby Wallace as Steve Jones Cr: Miya Mizuno/FX
Flattery got him nowhere with Lydon, who told the Sunday Times that Pistol was “the most disrespectful shit I’ve ever had to endure.”
According to his interview in the Guardian, Boyle believes that one of the advantages of streaming (as opposed to telling the story as a 90-minute feature) “is that it’s willing to take on board that kind of complexity — and look for the attachment of the audience not through quite such easy tropes: the lovable one, the hero moment, where he’s not quite as bad as you thought he was.”
https://youtu.be/35q8I9ZeGfw
Punk’s Outsize Influence on Boyle
He tells Esquire that the show got made: “If I’m being brutally honest, I think it was more to do with my age and ability to get it made. I wanted to do punk because it was the big formative experience for me, and it’s overshadowed everything I’ve done.”
Arguably you could trace a lineage of punk in Boyle’s own work; heroin addiction in Trainspotting, to which be brought an energy outside of mainstream filmmaking, and traced through Slumdog Millionaire (a rags-to-riches saga set in Bombay) — though it’s a stretch to call the Boyle of Steve Jobs, 28 Days Later and The Beach a punk filmmaker.
https://youtu.be/uh4-xTZiekA
He also cemented establishment credentials by directing the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics, which featured Daniel Craig’s 007 on Her Majesty’s service to launch the Games.
Music aside (Boyle was 21 in 1977, just the perfect age for punk rebellion), it is the director’s working class, Northern England roots that are the strongest through line in his work from Shallow Grave to Pistol.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
The Pistols “were a bunch of working class guys who broke the order of things, more than the Beatles,” he tells the New York Times. “It was especially resonant in the UK, where the way you were expected to behave was so entrenched.”
The line: “There is no future in England’s dreaming” is arguably even more political today, post-Brexit, than it was when James Callaghan was PM.
From left to right: Anson Boon as John Lydon, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Jacob Slater as Paul Cook in Pistol. CR: Rebecca Brenneman/FX
Perhaps Boyle’s most punk career moment was choosing to stick by his guns and the creative vision of regular screen writing collaborator Andrew Hodge when disagreements arose in the making of No Time To Die. Boyle was fired and hints to Esquire that the issue had to do with the way they used Bond’s child as a plot device.
Perhaps getting caught up in the machine, as he did with Bond, is a mode of working to which Boyle is not fundamentally suited.
The Fundamental Truths and Phantasmagoric Horror of “Men”
Starring Jessie Buckley, writer-director Alex Garland’s third film, “Men,” is an unconventional horror story about masculinity and its manifestations. Cr: A24
A woman alone in a large, secluded house; a walk through the woods and a stranger stalking through the underbrush — this might appear to be a classic horror set-up. But Men is no conventional horror film. At its core it is a story about a central crisis of our times — masculinity and its manifestations; about aggressions great and small; about ancient, unchecked ideas.
It’s also a film interested in the foundational myths that animate our culture and what audiences themselves bring with them to the theater.
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
“It’s about things I’ve been thinking about for a long time and some that have been touched upon in my earlier films,” says writer-director Alex Garland in the film’s production notes. “But what I wanted to do with it is to make a film that people can project onto as much as possible, where the viewer is a participant in the narrative.”
Men’s official cast list is only four names long. Star Jessie Buckley appears in nearly every frame as Harper, a young woman who has rented a secluded vacation home in the English countryside as a reprieve from recent relationship turmoil. There she encounters Rory Kinnear in a polymorphic performance recalling the multiple roles that Alec Guinness played in the classic British satire Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Writer-director Alex Garland on the set of “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Kinnear tells Ben Travis at Empire he ultimately plays nine or 10 different characters, each of whom are quite distinct from one another.
“Some are actively threatening, some of them seem fairly benign, but all of them personify different aspects of the male tendency to belittle or spite or slight,” he says.
Writer-director Alex Garland’s “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Jessie Buckley and Alex Garland on the set of “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
“Each one had to be as fully rounded as the next, even though some of them have a very limited amount of screen-time. The threat they represent, or their lack of self-awareness, had to come from a specific place within them.”
The film is Garland’s third as writer-director. Already he has established a singular filmmaking voice, at ease exploring philosophy, science, ethics, and the questions embedded in our times via the framework (and subversion) of genre.
His projects tend to challenge, confront, and fuel conversations. His first two movies, Ex Machinaand Annihilation, were sci-fi mindbenders. In Men, all the elemental ingredients of folk horror — isolation, nature, strangers, religion, fertility, violation, the uncanny — seem to be in play.
From writer-director Alex Garland’s “Men,” starring Jessie Buckley. Cr: A24
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
“In my mind, Men is connected to Annihilation,” Garland tells Entertainment Weekly’s Christian Holub. “They’re very much about how you’re feeling about something. Men is a gut-level film. I’m proud of Ex Machina, I really love it, but it’s an intellectual film. Men is not, I think.”
From writer-director Alex Garland’s “Men,” starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear. Cr: A24
If the first half of the film portrays the well-worn scenario of intense grief, “set somewhere lusciously photogenic, like Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now or Peter Medak’s The Changeling,” as Jordan Hoffman at AV Club puts it, the whole second half of the movie “is a carnival of imagery mixing folk horror, Biblical allegory, and an anatomy textbook gone horribly, horribly wrong.”
The ending — which we won’t reveal here — has got tongues wagging, but it isn’t designed only for shock value. As Garland has said, “The film works in a way as a strange sort of mirror — and people will have their own ideas about what it’s about, or not about, that mean something to them.”
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
On that front he worked extensively with Buckley and Kinnear in rehearsal to shape the script.
Buckley says, “The question this script offered me was the question of manhood and how it relates to what we’re experiencing in the culture at this moment. It’s a very heightened exploration of that. As we shot the film, new things were constantly revealed but when it comes to these questions, I think we’re all still searching.”
Kinnear, also in the production notes from distributor A24 (home of horror films like The Witch,Hereditaryand Midsommar), talks about the dialogue that the filmmakers hope to open up as audiences respond to Men.
“This film leans very hard into the idea that a story is a 50-50 split between the storytellers and the story receivers. More than any film I’ve worked on, this one was anticipating an audience would join the conversation.”
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Reviewers aren’t entirely sure it works but they commend the experiment.
“Don’t expect a hard sci-fi vision, just expect a vision: an intense surrealist twist on [horror’s] Final Girl trope,” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio wrote. “It will lead to more questions than answers but theories will abound.”
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey in “Men.” Cr: A24
Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: A24
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey and Jessie Buckley as Harper in “Men.” Cr: A24
The Playlist’s Brianna Zigler liked the idea of a horror film “that’s a little bit about the lack of creativity in horror films. The film picks at these [conventional horror genre] tropes and fashions a text out of that very mundanity, whether or not that text consistently works.”
AV Club’s Hoffman goes all in: “Whereas other movies merely dabble in surrealism — an incongruent montage here, a held frame in slow-motion as eerie music swells there — Men crosses the event horizon and allows itself to succumb,” he writes.
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
The cinematography is by Rob Hardy, who, with production designer Mark Digby, makes powerful use of color to denote different story points. Flashbacks to city life paint the screen in an inflamed orange, while present-day rural scenes are suffused in verdant green. The inside of her rented house, meanwhile, is ominously red.
Jessie Buckley as Harper and Paapa Essiedu as James in “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey in “Men.” Cr: A24
Writer-director Alex Garland’s “Men.” Cr: Kevin Baker/A24
“It’s like giving the viewer a nudge, somehow,” Garland tells EW. “When I say it’s a slightly aggressive film, that’s what I mean: It’s coming at the viewer. It’s a gentle movie sometimes, there’s lots of silly humor in there, but it’s also a bit delinquent.”
Every element of Men — photography, production design, costumes, makeup, sound, performance, and visual effects — layers together to create the extreme images of the film’s climactic scene.
We’ll leave that hanging.
Rory Kinnear as Geoffrey in “Men.” Cr: A24
Want more? In an interview with Collider, writer and director Alex Garland talks about how Men doesn’t explain every detail, expecting the audience to keep up and fill in the blanks without being spoon-fed. He also notes how Attack on Titan influenced his film, and how he collaborated with director of photography Rob Hardy to develop the color scheme:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“Shining Vale:” Because Middle Age Really Is Kind of a Horror Show
Blending horror with comedy, “Shining Vale” contains homages to horror classics like “The Shining” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps. Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
https://youtu.be/0bGIiI_k86o
There is a good reason that the television mix of horror and comedy don’t always blend. They are hard to do well and complex to achieve, not tending to satisfy either camp. But it seems that a new series from Starz, Shining Vale, is ironically “on trend.”
While damning the new show with the faintest of faint praise — “Solidly made meat-and-potatoes variations on the haunted-house scenario.” — Mike Hale from The New York Times makes a great point.
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps, Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps, Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps, Dylan Gage as Jake Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Mira Sorvino as Rosemary in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps, Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps, Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps, Dylan Gage as Jake Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
“(These types of shows) reflect the current state of TV production,” he surmises. “They get the job done: They hold your attention; they deliver satisfying creeps and jolts; and they’ll leave your mind the minute they’re over, making way for the next binge.”
Shining Vale is a horror comedy about a dysfunctional family that moves from the city to a small town into a creepy house in which terrible atrocities have taken place. But no one seems to notice except for Pat, the mother of the family, who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed — as it turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same.
Pat is a writer in the soft-porn style and is experiencing the second book “evaporation of ideas” syndrome from her hit of a debut novel. It just so happens that the house has a ghost, and the two enter a kind of one-sided Faustian pact to help each other out. The ghost, however, is more of the demon type and doesn’t play fair as Pat finds out to her cost.
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps and Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Dylan Gage as Jake Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Even if Hale is lukewarm on the show, IndieWire’s Kristen Lopez finds a better game to play with Shining Vale by spotting the horror tributes laid out like Easter eggs within the production design.
Writers Jeff Astrof (also the showrunner) and Sharon Horgan discussed several of the classic horror and noir movies they referenced in the series, and what viewers should be on the lookout for while watching it.
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps and Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Gabe Fonseca as Javi and Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
So, look out for The Shining from 1980. “The Stanley Kubrick-directed adaptation of this Stephen King-written novel is one of the primary references throughout the series.” The show was initially pitched by Horgan to Astrof as The Shining, but a comedy, so this appreciation of the original has Pat as the frustrated writer on the road to mania in a scary mansion — Courtney Cox taking Jack Nicholson’s place. (Eagle-eyed viewers might note how the haunted house looks like the famous Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s feature.)
https://youtu.be/JQdufw0F5YM
Cue 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, perhaps the most frightening horror movie of the lot. Astrof said they modeled the family’s kitchen off of the original from Roman Polanski’s feature. Also look out for tributes to 1980’s The Changeling (the pilot also boasts a sequence homaging this 1980 George C. Scott-starring horror feature, wherein a yellow ball bounces down the family staircase), and 1944’s Double Indemnity (that feature, directed by Billy Wilder, follows a femme fatale who convinces an insurance salesman to murder her husband.). Courtney Cox also channels Barbara Stanwyck, who played that character 78 years ago.
Mira Sorvino as Rosemary in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Mira Sorvino as Rosemary in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps, Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps, Dylan Gage as Jake Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
“The tone was being able to do references and homage without making it a spoof,” Astrof commented.
The cinematographer and production designer had also done their best to create the right mood to at least develop the scares, as they revealed in an interview with Suzanne Lezotte for the Sony Cine website. The show was a build — a replica of the house across three stages.
Merrin Dungey as Kamala and Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps, Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps, Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps and Susan Park as Valerie He in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Merrin Dungey as Kamala and Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
“Eight percent of the house is lit from outside,” said Suki Medencevic, the show’s director of photography. “The style of the show calls for wide-angle/low-angle shots. The camera is constantly moving. The outside lights gave us a very natural look inside.”
Using three Sony VENICE cameras on set, Medencevic also employed a Sony A7 IV for certain scenes. “That was a bargaining chip for me. If we needed to shoot any special angles, or unusual places, we didn’t have to use a VENICE. We worked with it for a few scenes when we needed a really low angle.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Astrof recognized what a steep learning curve horror writing was. “We knew we didn’t want to do Scream, we didn’t want to do Scary Movie,” he said. “I had a horror writer who basically really told me the rules of writing horror, and in horror, you have to fool the most sophisticated audience. In comedy, that isn’t necessarily the case.”
The show opens with an announcement that women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, that women are also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon, and that the symptoms of depression and possession are pretty much the same.
Melanie McFarland at Salon sees this declaration as a way in for the writers to start digging into the commonalities between depression and possession through the lens of horror. “In a recent conversation on ‘Salon Talks’, Horgan digs into the ways that Pat evokes the craziness of menopause, the expansion of shows about women over 40 and whether Pat is an extension of her own identity as a writer.”
Mira Sorvino as Rosemary and Ellie Grace Pomeroy as Daisy in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Derek Luh as Ryan and Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Mira Sorvino as Rosemary in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
McFarland pushes Horgan in to the realm of repression as well, characterized by Rosemary the ghost. “What I love about Shining Vale is the fact that, along with the horror-comedy element and along with its examination of depression, is this examination of repression. She’s very much representative of that desperate housewife trope.”
Horgan welcomes the nudge from McFarland, “Also, there’s just something really terrifying about a ‘50s housewife as an image. That being coiffed to within an inch of your life. It’s borderline psychotic in itself!”
However, The Hollywood Reporter reviewer Daniel Fienberg doesn’t get too bogged down in flavors of apparent themes, but is more interested in the arc of the show — and is happy when it starts resembling a better show.
“Shining Vale becomes not exactly good, but definitely interesting when Pat begins to change, conquering her writer’s block and losing her grasp on sanity. The actors all get better as the show gets more complicated, especially Cox,” he writes.
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Gus Birney as Gaynor Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps and Greg Kinnear as Terry Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Courteney Cox as Patricia “Pat” Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
Dylan Gage as Jake Phelps in “Shining Vale.” Cr: Kat Marcinowski/Starz
“Once the show stops blaming Pat for everything that’s happening and lets the character become a total, identity-shifting mess, Cox thrives.”
Judy Berman of TIME magazine mostly agrees with Fienberg. “The show doesn’t have as much to add to contemporary conversations around family, creativity, gender, or mental illness as it seems to think.” But she encourages audiences to keep with the show. “Suffice to say that if you can hang on until episode 3, you’ll find a stranger, more amusing haunted-house story lurking behind all the peeling wallpaper.”
How “The Staircase” Is a True-Crime Drama in All the Ways
“The Staircase” subject Michael Peterson says that “allowing them to film everything was the wisest decision I made.” Colin Firth as Michael Peterson. Cr: Warner Media
https://youtu.be/TftAFQflBy8
The problem with any documentary subject is that, once you put them on camera, are you getting the real person or someone performing?
That’s a key question, which prompted filmmaker Antonio Campos to revisit, research, and adapt for HBO into a miniseries about crime novelist Michael Peterson, who was convicted then acquitted of murdering his wife.
Toni Colette as Kathleen Peterson and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 1 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson and Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff in episode 1 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 1 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Olivia DeJonge as Caitlin and Rosemarie DeWitt as Candace Zamperini in episode 1 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Michael Stuhlbarg as David Rudolf in episode 1 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
“And the problem with Michael Peterson is, even in real life, there’s a performative quality to him,” says Campos. “So it’s a performance in a performance almost.”
You’d need to be familiar with the background to these events to fully appreciate the meta-narrative that Campos has delivered.
The Staircase is based on a 10-part documentary of the same name released in 2004 on the Sundance Channel before landing on Netflix in 2018 with three additional updated episodes. It follows the true story of Peterson and his wife Kathleen after she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their home, and the 16-year judicial battle that followed.
Toni Colette as Kathleen Peterson and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 2 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff and Olivia DeJonge as Caitlin in episode 2 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson, Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff, and Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff in episode 2 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Vincent Vermignon as Jean-Xavier in episode 2 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 2 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
The show stars Colin Firth and Toni Collette rounded out by Michael Stuhlbarg, Sophie Turner, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Parker Posey and Juliette Binoche.
In many ways the original The Staircase pioneered what we know as the true-crime genre. It forensically examined a case building suspense and probing the evidence throughout multiple episodes.
Documentary filmmakers are unleashing cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality to bring their projects to life. Gain insights into the making of these groundbreaking projects with these articles extracted from the NAB Amplify archives:
What intrigued Campos was not just whether Peterson had done it (he took an Alford Plea of voluntary manslaughter to settle the case — meaning sufficient evidence exists to convict him of the offence, but the defendant still asserts their innocence) but to what extent the documentary series itself had shaped the narrative of actual events.
That’s why the documentarians — French filmmakers Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet — feature as prominent characters in this new dramatic restaging. De Lestrade and Poncet had spent two years “embedded” with Peterson as they built their doc.
“One of the things that intrigued me was that the documentarians had different opinions about what happened — that the producer and the director don’t agree,” Campos explained to Mike DeAngelo at The Playlist.
Working alongside Campos is co-showrunner and co-writer Maggie Cohn. She told Variety, “We really thought it was such an interesting way to have a Greek chorus. They’re the people that are seemingly not invested in an outcome, but then you slowly see them become very invested to varying degrees in Michael Peterson’s fate. That’s kind of the most direct comparison to what the viewer’s experience will be.”
Campos was so interested in the original series when it came out. He was present during courtroom scenes that were captured in later episodes of the docuseries, but was wary of getting too close to Peterson.
Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson in episode 3 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Parker Posey as Freda Black and Cullen Moss as Jim Hardin in episode 3 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd Peterson in episode 3 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff, and Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff in episode 3 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Michael Stuhlbarg as David Rudolf in episode 3 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
While the original filmmakers spent hundreds of hours with Michael, Campos and Cohn took the opposite approach — purposefully limiting the amount of time they spoke to him.
Dane DeHaan as Clayton Peterson and Patrick Schwarzenegger as Toff Peterson in episode 4 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Dane DeHaan as Clayton Peterson and Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson in episode 4 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 4 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 4 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Parker Posey as Freda Black and Cullen Moss as Jim Hardin in episode 4 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
“I had avoided talking to him because I was worried that it would skew my perspective and affect the way that I was looking at him as a character,” Campos told Julie Miller at Vanity Fair.
In the article, Cohn admits that she “struggled with how to keep that separation and distance” between filmmaker and subject.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
“I mean, I was in a three-hour conversation and I was struggling with it. So imagine, over the course of two years, trying to keep that separation and that distance when you’re so intimately connected. And then to leave and go edit the documentary,” continues Cohn. “I got a very small taste of what that’s like to try to keep up that boundary… it’s very difficult, or it was for me.”
Campos himself counters, “that a good documentarian has to get close to a subject, to a certain degree, to get them to open up. That’s the challenge too, right? You have to try and maintain objectivity, but you also need to develop trust.”
Michael Stuhlbarg as David Rudolf and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 5 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, Dane DeHaan as Clayton Peterson, and Patrick Schwarzenegger as Toff Peterson in episode 5 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 5 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 5 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson in episode 5 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
The best true-crime docs are perhaps the ones where there is suspicion but no firm evidence. There is still no definitive resolution for how Kathleen died, meaning this new TV dramatization can only repeat the speculation of the prior series.
The very existence of the original documentary was even credited by Petersen as being one key to his acquittal since it showed him and fellow witnesses in a different light.
In his 2019 book, “Behind the Staircase,” Peterson expressed his gratitude to the documentary crew: “Allowing them to film everything was the wisest decision I made,” he wrote, “for during the trial, witnesses lied and committed perjury to convict me; it was all on film.”
Daniel Annone as Shawn, Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff, and Kara Young as Yasmine in episode 6 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Olivia DeJonge as Caitlin in episode 6 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 6 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 6 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Michael Stuhlbarg as David Rudolf, Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard, and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 6 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
This leads Esquire’s Laura Martin to wonder whether filmmakers should be more sensitive to the circumstances of the true-crime cases they dramatize and publicize.
The Dropout, the dramatization of the Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal has also arrived at an awkward moment for the real-life case. The trial of Holmes business partner Sunny Balwani was held up when two jurors were dismissed by the judge, as they had watched the Disney+ series, despite being asked not to engage in anything to do with the case beforehand.
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson in episode 7 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard in episode 7 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson in episode 7 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Susan Pourfar as Dr. Deborah Radisch in episode 7 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Trini Alvarado as Patty Peterson and Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff in episode 7 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
“Do we need more distance and time before the TV true-crime industrial complex jumps into action?” Martin muses.
“For the innocent wrongly accused of crimes they didn’t commit, it’s arguably never too soon. But for those unresolved cases with no clear-cut perpetrator, sometimes turning the cameras on only serves to muddy the waters of already impossible cases to solve.”
Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson in episode 8 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Juliette Binoche as Sophie Broussard, Sophie Turner as Margaret Ratliff, and Odessa Young as Martha Ratliff in episode 8 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Vincent Vermignon as Jean-Xavier in episode 8 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson and Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in episode 8 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
Rosemarie DeWitt as Candace Zamperini in episode 8 of “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
“The Staircase:” When True Crime Maybe Isn’t That Truthful
Frank Feys and Vincent Vermignon in “The Staircase.” Cr: Warner Media
The fallout from the HBO Max dramatization of true crime story The Staircase has put the role of documentary makers in the spotlight.
Documentary filmmakers might purport to tell the truth but they must also acknowledge their inevitable role in shaping the story. No film is objective; the question is to what extent you are honest about that.
To recap: The Staircase revolves around the death of Kathleen Peterson in 2001 and the murder trial of her husband Michael in 2003, while a documentary team led by director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and editor Sophie Brunet chronicle the case for a docuseries of the same name.
The HBO adaptation moves the events into fiction (starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette) and includes the original documentary crew as characters in the drama — with the apparent consent of de Lestrade who sold his rights to HBO to make the show.
At issue is that the HBO series, by Antonio Campos, depicts de Lestrade and the original series’ editor Sophie Brunet, each acting in ethically questionable ways.
In Campos’ dramatization, de Lestrade is depicted as a docu helmer who asks for multiple takes and more emotion. Brunet, meanwhile, is portrayed as someone who edited the docuseries to benefit Peterson because she’s in love with him.
Naturally, the real de Lestrade and Brunet are not happy about that but Peterson himself is livid.
In a series of emails sent to Variety, Peterson said, “I have read about Jean de Lestrade’s sense of betrayal by Antonio Campos and HBO Max’s presentation of The Staircase, but what has been forgotten or overlooked or simply ignored is his betrayal of me and my family.
“We feel that Jean pimped us out — sold OUR story to Campos for money — what word other than pimped describes what he did?”
De Lestrade produced and directed the docuseries. In addition to a fee, he received a co-executive producer credit on the adaptation.
“He released his archive to Campos who then created a fictional account of events, most of which trashed me (which I really don’t care about) and my children — which I really do care about,” Peterson says. “There are egregious fabrications and distortions of the truth in the HBO series, well beyond what may be considered ‘artistic’ license.”
Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in “The Staircase,” cr: Warner Media
De Lestrade defends himself, unconvincingly, also to Variety: “Since I knew that Antonio had in mind to tell the story of Michael and the documentary, I thought that it would be better to cooperate, and be involved in the process then to stay totally outside as a stranger. In a way I thought I was protecting Michael and his family by being involved, but I was wrong.”
Much of this is a playground spat of “he said, she said,” but documentary filmmakers have been closely watching the debate too.
“This notion of documentary truth is a false one. It never really made sense, because you always manipulate the material. Always. The question is how far do you go?”
— Sam Pollard
For Dawn Porter, director of John Lewis: Good Trouble, the risks of such adaptations are clear.
“The risk of allowing someone else to fictionalize your story is that you can’t reclaim that narrative even if it’s so clear that the fiction is false,” Porter told Variety.
“So while it’s probably flattering to have somebody say, ‘I want to fictionalize your film,’ the key word is fiction.”
Ultimately the issue is unfortunate for the entire documentary community.
“Part of the popularity of documentaries is that it’s the truth,” Porter continues. “So, anything that calls into question that it’s true, or as true as you can make it because there is no absolute truth, is a problem.”
“The risk of allowing someone else to fictionalize your story is that you can’t reclaim that narrative even if it’s so clear that the fiction is false.”
— Dawn Porter
Sam Pollard, also a documentary director and editor (MLK/FBI), feels that audiences should know that docs are already coming from a filmmaker’s point of view.
“This notion of documentary truth is a false one,” Pollard told Variety. “It never really made sense, because you always manipulate the material. Always. The question is how far do you go?”
Producer-director Marc Smerling (The Jinx) is adamant that while he would never ask a subject to be more emotional and do another take, as depicted in The Staircase, but believes that Campos simply did his job.
“He seems to be mining this idea that storytelling in itself crosses different truths and realities, and it’s really hard at some point to understand what the truth and what the fiction is,” says Smerling. “He had a story that he wanted to tell, and he’s trying to tell it in a very clear way to an audience. He’s amplifying certain parts of the story and he’s compressing time. We all do that.”
Campos gave his reasons for including the documentary crew as players in his dramatization to The Wrap. “What got me really excited when I met them was… it felt like the filmmakers were a Greek chorus for us, (verbalizing) those debates about Michael Peterson and the evidence that we were all having in our homes or in our heads.”
Co-showrunner and executive producer Maggie Cohn noted that in episode 4 of the HBO show, they depicted the documentary team constructing the doc they would go on to make about the defense and the prosecution. “They’re constructing a story about two stories that are being told, and we’re making a story about all of those stories,” Cohn said. “We are also asking the viewer to be as critical as those documentarians are about the story that we are giving you.”
Julia Roberts stars as Martha Mitchell and Sean Penn as John Mitchell in the limited series “Gaslit,” which aims to share the stories of the woman kept in the background during the historic Watergate political scandal. Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
Mitchell, Dean, Liddy, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Hunt, Magruder, McCord — the infamous rollcall of all the president’s men etched into the history of Watergate by the book and film, whose heroes were the journalists that uncovered criminality in Nixon’s White House. But there’s another side to this story that foregrounds the role of the women who were kept in the background then and sidelined in subsequent accounts of the events of 1972-74.
That is what Gaslit sets out to redress. The new Starz original series focuses in particular on Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts), the wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell (Sean Penn), who was several steps ahead of Woodward and Bernstein and had the courage to blow the whistle on the whole house of cards.
If you haven’t heard of her story, that’s because she was publicly vilified for disloyalty and HIS-tory has done a good job of propping that narrative up. Similarly, the role of Maureen “Mo” Dean (Betty Gilpin) wife to White House Counsel John Dean is brought out of the shadows.
Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
“I don’t know if Gaslit will be able to replace All The President’s Men in popular consciousness — or if it should — but we are reframing those events through characters that were marginalized and were collateral damage of this giant power structure that was incredibly controlling of all the levers of American democracy,” says editor Joe Leonard (who previously worked with exec producer Sam Esmail on Mr. Robot and Briarpatch and went to film school with showrunner Robbie Pickering).
“A lot of the characters we feature are peripheral in All The President’s Men,” says Leonard. “[The book and 1976 Oscar-winning film of the scandal] took the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern [Woodward/Bernstein] and made it about them in the public perception. In Gaslit you are meeting characters that you don’t really know and seeing these momentous events through their lens. There is the element of the ticking clock, characters whose fate is doomed.”
Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell and Allison Tolman as Winnie in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
Leonard had already been engrossed by Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast on which Gaslit is based, and followed that up by listening to the audio book King Richard, an account of Watergate by Michael Dobbs, to immerse himself in context.
“You have to learn about the real events then you almost have to forget them because what we’re doing is not strictly historical. The facts don’t change but this is not a documentary.”
In dramatizing the power dynamics and behind the scenes relationships of very public figures and headline events Gaslit is reminiscent of The Crown.
“The tragedy of Martha Mitchell is that she wasn’t remembered as a truth-teller,” Pickering explains. “She wasn’t remembered at all because people like her don’t write the history books. Martha’s story is so amazing because she was gaslit on a national stage and she was crucified for telling the truth. Her story didn’t end well and I believe that when somebody is gaslit like that, it’s our duty to tell the truth and show that they were telling the truth. That’s what I’m trying to do with the Martha Mitchell story. It’s a story about us, our country, and how we, as people, find convenient scapegoats in desperate times.”
Leonard cut the pilot, and explains the importance of establishing the series’ tonal balance. “Martha was an arch conservative and a strong woman in a very alpha male world, a feminist in some ways. We had to ground her scenes and really find the tone where she exists in this world and one where John Mitchell. Finding what their power dynamic is was crucial to the marital drama,” he says.
Dan Stevens as John Dean and Betty Gilpin as Mo Dean in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
“Also in episode 1 we meet John Dean (Dan Stevens). He’s ambitious, wants to climb the political ladder, but he makes the wrong decision in the first big scene with Mitchell and where the whole series really begins,” Leonard continues. “It’s one pressure-filled bad decision in a smoky room. He makes the wrong call [to cover up the break in] and from then on his fate is sealed as he gets dragged in. Editorially the challenge was to tonally balance these storylines.”
The eight-hour series was directed by Matt Ross and shot in blocks, meaning that all the scenes set in the White House were shot in one go, then all the scenes set in the Mitchell’s apartment, and so on. That meant Leonard and fellow editors Franklin Peterson and Lauren Connelly were editing their episodes simultaneously as scenes came in.
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“I would get one or two scenes for the pilot and episodes 4 and 7 and these were like puzzle pieces waiting for the rest of the material to fit around it,” Leonard says. “It meant that some of the first things I cut had to be recut as you learn more about the pace and structure of the story. On the other hand, some of that early work helps inform scenes in later episodes. I had a major six-minute scene for episode 1 only come in on the last week of shooting but at this point I knew the characters and, in a day or two, I had it in shape where I would probably have spent weeks fiddling with it if I’d worked on that four months previously.”
Shea Whigham as G. Gordon Liddy in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
The editors also screened scenes for each other and talked about story development. “Watching other editor’s work is really helpful. There are things other people bring to character development. For instance, John Dean does this gesture when nervous, or when he’s lying he does this. These little things noticed in performance by each of us help build and inform character.”
All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the age-old theme as resonant today as it was in Shakespeare’s time. There are clear parallels between the Watergate scandal and the opportunistic subordinates, deranged zealots, and tragic whistleblowers of our current politics.
“It’s the nature of a power structure to impose its will,” Leonard observes. “In the last 10 years we’ve witnessed the rise of Trumpism and the attempt to control and subvert democracy by essentially controlling the levers of power.”
Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
The story is also universal in the sense that we might identify with the players caught up in it.
“There are dozens of Deans and Martha Mitchells in and around government now. In Martha with have a woman who wasn’t believed. She was called crazy and a drunk, which might have been true — it is a complicated story. But she was still right.
“I think that what we are trying to do in Gaslit is to understand their actions rather than to demonize. I had a lot of compassion for the characters even at their worst,” Leonard says. “You have to come from a place of extreme empathy and the job is to understand them in telling the story.”
He likens the work to Pablo Larraín’s features Jackie and Spencer, “which are like a dream of the reality but really coming from places that empathize with the truth of the emotions of those involved.”
Gaslit Cinematography
The show’s visuals don’t scream “the seventies,” but provide an unobtrusive backdrop to capturing the mood of the era.
Dan Stevens as John Dean in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
“Matt wanted it to look bold, unlit, and found,” says director of photography Larkin Seiple (who has previously shot many music videos and also provided additional photography on Spider-Man: Far from Home). “Not a documentary and not a movie, just something that looked like these people walked in a room and turned on the lights.”
That meant that the choice of light sources was differently imagined, coming from windows and practical lights embedded in the production design, as opposed to large-scale diffusion setups.
Seiple also decided that to achieve a realistic seventies look he would use period equipment and methods wherever appropriate. “We chose to shoot on vintage lenses from the seventies to give it a softness,” the cinematographer explains. “And we use different lens sets for different characters — softer lenses for Martha, harsher lenses for John Dean — there’s a mish-mash of lenses throughout the story to build something subtle into the photography for each character.”
Sean Penn as John Mitchell in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
The DP deployed hard light and some fixtures from the 1970s. All the news footage and game shows were shot on Ikegami cameras from the 1970s that look like they’re from the period.
“We were leaning on the classic innovation from back then, and they’re pretty messed up, distortive, and with color bleed,” he said.
Seiple was nominated for a 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour) for his work on the first episode of Gaslit, “Will.”
In an interview with IndieWire’s Erik Adams and Chris O’Falt, Seiple described his approach to shooting the series. “On Gaslit, our director, Matt Ross, wanted to use the visuals to make bold choices and bring a sense of humanity to each character and their moral ambiguity, since we follow not only the heroes but also the villains and everyone in between during the Watergate scandal. We decided to use different lens sets between the main characters to enhance their perspectives and match their emotional arc and mental state.”
He continues: “We spent a whole day testing every lens Keslow Camera could find in a small motel room set with stand-ins. We were chasing an image that was harsh and real but also compelling and photographic: an elevated version of 1970s street photography. We shifted between dramatic looks of blown-out windows, strong back light, hard front light, fluorescents, and tungsten practicals. We pushed the lenses to expose their flaws because we wanted to light the film in a very real manner to combat the fact that we were shooting primarily on stages.
“We landed on Canon K35s for Martha, the martyr of the story, as they felt soft and intimate with subtle fall off on the edges. Impressionistic at times. This type of glass also had a raw quality, a flare and veiling that made you feel present in the space,” he said.
“For the villains like Gordon Liddy and his cohorts we danced between Cooke Speed Panchros and Zeiss Super Speeds. The Super Speeds really had a bite to them, an edge and contrast that stood out against the other characters. For flashbacks we opted to use the MiniHawks which created a very fragile looking image.”
Seiple shares that “we also reserved some focal lengths for specific actors, the Super Speed 25mm was only used for Gordon Liddy’s close-ups, lovingly referred to as ‘The Liddy,’ as the lens had a distorted and off-kilter effect.
“Our story is from the past but has many modern political implications so we tried to create something timeless. We didn’t want a gritty 16mm look nor did we want the super sharp large format look with the very modern super shallow depth off field. We found the super 35mm sensor on the Alexa Mini was perfect, it allowed us to still see our beautiful sets while shooting wide open but also softened the images just enough and took the edge off highlights. The cameras were small and lean allowing us to shoot multiple actors at once as performance was the priority and we wanted to let the cast change it up each take.
“Along with the appropriate camera and lenses we also created a ‘look’ for the show with our colorist Alex Bickel,” he referenced. “The look was based a film stock from 1970s: Eastman 100T 5254. It was super contrasty with bold skin tones and very inky shadows. More importantly it didn’t have the cyan shadows that you see in many modern films, but instead has a cobalt blue edge to the night work.”
With colorist Alex Bickel and color scientist Bill Feightner, Seiple emulated a film stock of the era, building a LUT to recalculate the color for Gaslit based on period-appropriate stock.
The series’ main set is the Mitchells’ Watergate complex penthouse apartment. It’s a great example of liberties taken with the factual background to enhance the on-screen drama. “The real Mitchell apartment was blander, more humble,” production designer Daniel Novotny explains. “We upgraded the home a bit to give it more cinematic value, more depth. Their real apartment was just a box with low ceilings. It was painted a gray-blue, and the carpet was dingy. We needed to elevate the architectural space, the finishes, and the color palette, to make it look better on camera, and we created a split-level floor plan so that you could have interesting eye lines and camera angles.”
The home reflects Martha Mitchell’s design choices. “She would have decorated, and Mitchell would have come home to her environment. This is her world, her colors, and her choices.”
Betty Gilpin as Mo Dean in “Gaslit.” Cr: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz
Set decorator Jennifer Lukehart adds that “the bedroom is private, it’s more Martha, who leaned toward the ornate, but the public space is more austere. I don’t think it was her natural style.”
The absence of Martha Mitchell and Mo Dean from the received story of Watergate was by design.
“History is written by the winners, by the heroes, by the victors,” explains Pickering. “This is a story about the losers, which I think is a much more interesting story
“The challenge of taking on a story about Watergate is knowing the difference between facts and the truth. Gaslit is not a journalistic presentation, but it is the truth about what happened.”
Want more? Watch a roundtable discussion from Gold Derby about the making of Gaslit with showrunner Robbie Pickering, cast member Shea Whigham, writer Amelia Gray, cinematographer Larkin Seiple, and production designer Daniel Novotny:
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Law and Disorder: David Simon’s Complex Crime Drama “We Own This City”
HBO’s brutal new crime drama “We Own This City” takes a look at the rise and fall of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, or the GTTF, through surprisingly intimate portrayals of the real people caught in the center of the scandal. Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins. Cr: Warner Media
HBO’s brutal new crime drama We Own This City takes a look at the rise and fall of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, or the GTTF, through surprisingly intimate portrayals of the real people caught in the center of the scandal. The series is based on former Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s non-fiction book of the same name and has been produced by two of the crime genre’s all-time greats: George Pelecanos and David Simon.
The duo previously tackled the twin monsters of crime and police corruption in the HBO masterpiece, The Wire, and worked together on HBO shows Treme and The Deuce.
While The Wire was a sweeping opera showing the interconnection between law enforcement, the drug trade, ports, politics, and journalism, We Own This City — also shot in Baltimore — looks at a very specific group of corrupt cops.
Darrell Britt-Gibson as Jemell Rayam and McKinley Belcher III as Momodu “G Money” Gondo in episode 1 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Don Harvey as John Sieracki, Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen, and McKinley Belcher III as Momodu “G Money” Gondo in episode 1 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins in episode 1 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins and Jamie Hector as Sean Suiter in episode 1 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
“It’s a devastating six episode limited series that will leave you feeling raw, even if it ends with a whole bunch of bad guys behind bars,” Decider’s Meghan O’Keefe writes in her interview with the showrunners.
“The truth is that law enforcement runs the spectrum. So does the street for that matter,” Simon said. “Everyone starts on the human scale somewhere.”
In 2017, eight Baltimore Police Officers who worked in the Gun Trace Task Force were found guilty of using their positions to shakedown civilians for cash, falsifying police records, and scamming their way to outsized overtime paychecks.
Fenton, who worked as a consultant on the show, says the level of corruption was absolutely staggering. “It spans dozens if not hundreds of incidents under our noses,” he told David Smith in an interview for The Guardian.
“There’s been so much rightful attention on police brutality and so we know when an officer shoots somebody there’s an injury, there’s a death. But this type of casual everyday lying, stealing, misrepresenting information, in some cases framing people — it’s hard to prove and for that reason it often went unaddressed.”
We Own This City looks at these crimes, primarily through the story of the group’s ringleader, Sgt Wayne Jenkins (played by Jon Bernthal). He was praised as a positive role model who enjoyed the admiration and respect of his superiors. He was given special privileges; the elite unit came to be seen by senior commanders as “a bulwark against chaos.” Jenkins is now serving a prison sentence until January 2039.
Simon explained to Decider that they seized upon Jenkins as their primary character because he had the “longest chronology” to cover.
“If you live by the mantra that, ‘ACAB,’ all cops are bastards, or you live by the mantra of Back the Blue, you’re probably not going to be particularly satisfied with some parts of this mini-series,” he said.
The story of Jenkins, his colleagues and accomplices, and the scandal surrounding them is a complex one. “The level of detail is intentional,” Pelecanos said to Josiah Bates in an interview for TIME. “If we have any fears about doing these shows, it’s that a person in Baltimore will look at our Baltimore show and say, That was bullsh-t. Same thing when we did The Deuce in New York. If one person knows we didn’t get it right, it bothers me.”
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At times, We Own This City feels more like a documentary than a TV drama.
“You have to deny yourself the perfect drama sometimes,” Simon told Bates. “Sometimes you have to say, that this would be the grander arc if we could portray it this way, [or] it the guy had a more poetic line. And sometimes you have to kill those, because they deny the reality that you are responsible if you’re dealing with nonfiction material.”
Some might say this is a peak moment for based-on-truth TV dramas, but Pelecanos says their take is different.
“People like to see rich and successful people get taken down. That’s why a show like Law & Order is so popular. It’s always the person who lives on Central Park West that did a murder. It’s a false narrative; it makes people feel like yeah, there is justice. The truth is those people don’t go to jail. I think shows that highlight the realities stand out more.”
Tray Chaney as Gordon Hawk in episode 1 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
David Corenswet as David McDougall, Gabrielle Carteris as Andrea Smith, and Larry Mitchell as Detective Scott Kilpatrick in episode 2 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Aristeo Kardi as Ryan Guinn and Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen in episode 2 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
David Corenswet as David McDougall, Larry Mitchell as Detective Scott Kilpatrick, Gabrielle Carteris as Andrea Smith, and Melvin T. Russell as Aaron “Black” Anderson in episode 2 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
But they’re not just interested in facts — they want to convey the feeling of committing these crimes, suggests Jason Bailey at The Playlist.
“The seductiveness, the ease, and most of all, the entitlement,” he writes. “Jenkins has a short but punchy speech where he explains exactly why he feels he should help himself, and while the view is certainly not endorsed, the writers at least attempt to understand it.”
“We don’t believe ‘back the blue’ or the ‘thin blue line’ is the motif that you need to take into a serious discussion about law enforcement,” Simon told TIME. “But we also don’t believe that ‘defund the police’ works as a simple mantra that solves anything. We live in the middle. There’s a role and a mission for good police work that’s not happening in Baltimore, which is the most dangerous it’s been in modern history. If you live for a slogan and that’s where you reside in your assessments of what’s going on in America, you will be disappointed in the arguments that we’re trying to present.”
Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen in episode 3 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins and Leah Pressman as Kristy Jenkins in episode 2 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Don Harvey as John Sieracki and Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen in episode 2 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Bobby Brown as Thomas Allers and Darrell Britt-Gibson as Jemell Rayam in episode 3 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
This is not The Wire returns, but the issues explored in that show’s six seasons are continued here. In many cases the corruption and complexity has multiplied.
“About 40, 50 years ago, we started emphasizing the wrong things and judging police work by the wrong metrics. Baltimore and the Gun Trace Task Force is the coda,” Simon told Decider. “We started arguing these things in The Wire, but things have reached a pass and ultimately some of the characters we depicted in The Wire were already off the rails, but they weren’t dragging the whole department with them — you know, the Hersls and Carvers of The Wire — they’re now the Colonels and the Majors. And they’re now training the lieutenants in the story in how not to do police work the right way.
“So, the institutional memory of a lot of these agencies has now become lock everybody up, put dope and guns on the table and turn the other way when things get dirty instead of doing actual police,” Simon said. “That’s what happened in Baltimore.”
One thing that happened since The Wire is smartphones. “The technology really made a difference,” Pelecanos said in TIME. “Everybody can record what’s going on in the streets, and people can’t lie as easily because it’s on record. [The officer who killed George Floyd] never would have been convicted without the footage from the iPhone.”
We Own This City’s plot hops back and forth in time so we can see the cause and effect of the GTTF’s crimes. Pelecanos and Simon admitted to Decider they were worried about this risky way of plotting the series, but Simon said, “If we went linearly, it becomes just a story of here are these bad cops and we’re going to catch them. We really wanted it to be about the why. Why did this situation come to the place it did? How did these people come about?”
Jamie Hector as Sean Sulter in episode 3 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins in episode 3 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
Dagmara Domińczyk as Erika Jensen in episode 3 of “We Own This City.” Cr: Warner Media
It hasn’t entirely worked. “The show’s biggest flaw, one of the few it shares with other true-crime dramas, is a fractured chronology that emphasizes cleverness over comprehension,” Joshua Alston critiques at Variety.
“With this much happening at once, all the onscreen datelines in the world aren’t enough to avert the sense of being unmoored from time. But that may be a quibble for a show like City, which is inspired by a type of true crime so pervasive and deep-rooted that only the tools and tactics evolve over time.”
All of the episodes are directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), “who does his best to keep the complicated chronology straight,” according to Playlist. “He mostly succeeds, though this is not casual viewing, and viewers who use TV as background while scrolling or doing chores will likely be lost.
“That’s on them; what’s more pressing is Green’s lack of visual flair, his inability to make the (many, many) scenes of people sitting in rooms talking look like anything more dynamic than people sitting in rooms talking. It’s a tough task, to be sure, but the best directors of The Wire figured it out.”
“Don’t touch that dial!” probably hasn’t been heard from a television set in a few decades. It’s a cultural relic of the 1950s and 1960s TV world. It has been parodied since those days, but the reference is probably now so distant as to be no more relevant than “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” (Say what, Gen Z?)
But now you can touch that dial once again, virtually, thanks to the industriousness of Joey Cato. Cato’s a “designer” and responsible for the online My Retro TVs.
Looking a little low-rent (that is possibly part of the charm?) My Retro TVs offers the true televisiophile a date with the dial in its native habit, more or less. “TVs” from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s are available for channel/web surfing.
Click on one of the authentic era TV icons and programming from that decade begins playing on the screen. It can be filtered by genre or just left to randomosity. Genres include: cartoons, comedy, commercials, drama, gameshows, kids, movies, music, news, soaps, specials, sports, talk shows, trailers, plus some miscellany.
(I do wish to register one annoyance — YouTube’s banner ad are particularly annoying with a greater coverage of programming material than usual. But that can’t be controlled since Cato is simply streaming the streamer.)
With the 1960s and 1970s TVs you can even play with some of the technical foibles of those ancient devices. Kids today just don’t know the heady dynamic of “noise,” more commonly called “snow.” Consider yourselves lucky.
So what inspired Cato to create this prospectively enormous time-suck?
I just wanted to make something that helped me reconnect to/reclaim the past.
Joey Cato
He says, “I’ve always been a huge ’80s nostalgia nut. I grew up as a poor child of the ’80s in a small town with limited access to the full pop culture experience, so in a sense I just wanted to make something that helped me reconnect to/reclaim the past.”
In addition, he recalls book and web influences. “I had read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline back then and it really left an impression on me. If anything, it inspired me to make something that was ’80s themed. Also around that time I discovered a cool website, the90sbutton.com. I liked the approach they took with music videos, so that influenced my decision on which media to choose.”
Where does the vast amount of programming, numbering in the tens of thousands, come from? How did he find all that historical material? How has he secured replay rights?
Why YouTube, of course. He’s streaming the streamer (in a wonderfully subversive and retro hot-linking scheme.)
I do have one complaint, however. YouTube’s banner ads are extremely annoying in this context.
But back to our regularly scheduled programming (bet you haven’t heard that one in a while, if ever) …
Just in case some super-dedicated TV-holics manage to watch the days’, maybe weeks’-worth of programming now available, Cato’s mission is to explore strange new programming; to seek out new shows and new episodes. To boldly go where no retro TV has gone before.
So long as it is within the time frame and on YouTube, of course.
He explains, “I already have a process in place to crowd-source the site with user suggestions (each TV portal has a suggestion box link where users can contribute their own YouTube clips.) I also routinely run some automation scripts from time to time to make sure the site stays fresh.”
What a guy!
Cato adds, “Originally this project was a labor of love, but hearing folks from all the world share their memories and stories with me was probably the most rewarding experience of making this project.”
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“Tokyo Vice:” (Another) Michael Mann ‘90s Noir Masterclass
Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) walks through a rainy Tokyo street on his way home from pursuing a story.
Cr. WarnerMedia
When a Hollywood heavy-hitter gets involved with a big American television production 100% embedded and shot in Tokyo during a pandemic, you already have a story within a story. Add in the fact that plot was inspired by a memoir written by a colorful character in his own right, and you have quite the layered drama.
Director, producer and writer Michael Mann took on the pilot for HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice. Mann, who hadn’t directed anything since the underrated Blackhat in 2015, was approached by John Lesher, a former head of Paramount Pictures who had optioned the book of the same name when it came out in 2009 and had signed on as a producer of the adaptation.
RogerEbert.com’s Nick Allen beautifully sums up the thriller: “Tokyo Vice is something of a dream when it comes to nonfiction, genre-related entertainment. It has the thrum of a newspaper story, the bloodied grip of a yakuza thriller, and the mysterious conspiracy of a fascinating noir tale. A seductive universe that balances a fish-out-of-water perspective with traditions in Japanese crime.”
“Based on Adelstein’s memoir of the same name (the book’s full name is Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan), the eight-episode series tells the story of a young American reporter at a large newspaper in 1999 as he uncovers ties between the police, politicians and Tokyo’s criminal underworld while facing cultural clashes, societal hierarchies and the challenges of forging his own path.”
Palm describes Ansel Elgort’s version is of the American cub reporter as a “lightly fictionalized version of Adelstein.” However, playwright and Tokyo Vice showrunner J.T. Rogers stressed to Palm that “Tokyo Vice is not biography, nor documentary. It’s inspired by real events, but it’s fiction.”
Elgort hopes to break a story while working the Metropolitan Police beat for the Meicho Shimbun, modeled on the real-life Yomiuri Shimbun. Cr: WarnerMedia
The profile also notes that Rogers is a childhood friend of Adelstein’s. (Perhaps the tourist “Dave Finch — from Rockbridge” theater kid of episode seven is an Easter egg alluding to this connection?) Adelstein initially tapped Rogers to adapt the memoir into a film, but he took on the showrunner gig when Mann came on board.
In fact, Tokyo Vice was originally set to be a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe who was to play Adelstein (a role that eventually went to Ansel Elgort for the TV series).
Adelstein believes the Japanese film industry’s lingering fear of the yakuza was a factor in the demise of the movie option; others involved chalked it up to more mundane financing issues.
However, it’s worth noting that the buzz about the show has drawn out its fair share of critics, who doubt the plausibility of many of the scenarios presented in Adelstein’s memoir.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Gavin J. Blair broke the scoop about Adelstein as unreliable narrator via an interview with one of his cub reporter contemporaries at the Yomiuri Shimbun, Naoki Tsujii, and another with producer-director Calder Greenwood, who briefly tapped Adelstein as a fixer for the National Geographic documentary Crime Lords of Tokyo.
“[W]ith the high-profile nature of the show, which debuted April 7 on HBO Max, there is renewed focus on the veracity of some of the stories Adelstein has been telling about himself over the years — under the guise of nonfiction memoir,” Blair writes.
For his part Tsujii told Blair that he admires Adelstein but — as a former reporter and current literature professor — “he knows the difference between the disciplines” of memoir and fiction, as Blair puts it.
Greenwood’s memories and characterizations are not so generous, perhaps colored by the lawsuit — dismissed with prejudice — that Adelstein filed against NatGeo/Fox to bar the broadcast of the show, claiming it would endanger his life (after he had been fired from the production).
Despite the increased scrutiny, or perhaps because of it, Adelstein has doubled down on even the most unlikely bits of his book, namely time allegedly spent undercover with a yakuza clan and instances of sources demanding he trade sexual favors in exchange for information.
For his part, Tokyo Vice executive producer John Lesher was quick to distance his version of Adelstein from the one put forth by the actual man. Lesher told THR, “There were so many things that we embellished and created that had nothing to do with, let’s call it ‘the real Jake Adelstein story. Whether the book is true or not, you should take it up with him and the people depicted in the book. I wasn’t there.”
Miayamoto and Ken Watanabe’s staid organized crime detective Hiroto Katagiri confer about what to do about their latest yakuza entanglement. Cr: WarnerMedia
Poul had lived in Tokyo in the ’80s and had worked on Ridley Scott’s Black Rain yakuza-themed movie as associate producer. His prize asset was that he spoke fluent Japanese, which ultimately got him the job on the Scott movie. Poul also directed the finale of Tokyo Vice.
“It’s easy to barely skim the surface of Japan and still deliver to an American audience the exoticism and visual sophistication they crave,” Poul said. “We hoped to really get below the surface and present an authentic portrait of Japan, one that will deepen people’s understanding of the country.”
Yakuza Sato (Sho Kamatsu) and nightclub hostess Samantha Porter (Rachel Keller) eat dinner. Cr: WarnerMedia
Rogers talked about how their pandemic shutdown had, in fact, helped the production. including actors given time to fine tune their Japanese or English, as it was to be a bilingual script.
Rogers explained, “We only shot six days when we were shutdown, but it gave us a chance to re-assess and just feel more secure about what the show was when we went back.”
We hoped to really get below the surface and present an authentic portrait of Japan, one that will deepen people’s understanding of the country.
Alan Poul
Lead Elgort had continued to study Japanese during the shutdown, which allowed him to rise above “mimicking his line” phonetically but actually knowing what he was saying.
But, as other global productions had found, the pandemic restrictions played in to the hands of the producers; especially in Japan. Tokyo’s COVID-19 emergency measures urged establishments to close early and largely emptied the streets, creating favorable conditions.
“The ability to shoot in the time-warped area Golden Gai, with its highly cinematic narrow alleys lined with hundreds of tiny bars, likely wouldn’t have been an option before the pandemic,” said Poul.
Once filming was able to continue after the shutdown, shooting an enormous bilingual show in Tokyo during a pandemic presented myriad problems. The production had to administer roughly 300 P.C.R. tests per week for seven months. Locations like the labyrinthine, neon-lit alleyways of Kabukicho, while visually dazzling, made for punishingly complex shoots.
The New York Times review by Mike Hale doesn’t underestimate the pull of Michael Mann’s direction of the pilot and so the show’s tone. “And like Lost in Translation, with its voluptuous, melancholy romanticism, Tokyo Vice finesses its exoticism by asserting a distinctive style — in this case the moody, atmospheric naturalism of Michael Mann, who directed the pilot and helped set the look and rhythms of the series.”
Many of the reviews hark back to the Al Pacino character in Mann’s 1999 The Insider with his incessant 60 Minutes producer’s drive. Mann wanted Elgort’s character to follow the same path but with the added stress of being a stranger in a strange land.
Mann told The Ringerwhy he believed in the character so much: “It’s the imperative and commitment of this main character in becoming a reporter and doing it in Japan. It’s his quest to report what really happened. That was the appeal of the project.”
The good news for Mann fans comes from The Ringer’s review: “The good and unsurprising news is that, after a seven-year absence from filmmaking, Mann hasn’t lost his fastball. In his finest feat of image-making from the pilot, we see a series of trains going in and out of Tokyo before the camera focuses on a nearby victim who’s been stabbed with a sword: a potent metaphor for how the yakuza have penetrated the city.”
Mann “is justly lionized for his nighttime noir and the show, especially the first episode, is really drenched in that. So it was terrific to watch him work that way. Plus, we cast together, and you give him a lot of deference because he’s got great experience.”
“Early 21st-century Tokyo (most of the first season takes place in 1999) seems like it was built for Mann to shoot, with its abundant cool glass and metal surfaces, and its abundant neon signage,” Alan Sepinwall writes for Rolling Stone. “There are some gorgeous shots, particularly one of four different trains passing the same location at once while a man stands framed by all the tracks; the camera pulls out and we see that the man has been stabbed to death by an old-fashioned blade, contrasted with this modern backdrop.”
Beyond the aesthetics, the series “makes a number of sincere gestures towards the city in which its fictionalized Jake has settled,” Sepinwall writes. The attempts are both literary and practical, including a script that heavily features Japanese conversations and English subtitles and a cast of characters more well rounded than prior attempts to showcase an American PoV of another culture.
Rinko Kikuchi portrays Eimi Maruyama, Adelstein’s supervisor and a dogged reporter who refuses to let entrenched sexism and prejudice against her background limit her career. Cr: WarnerMedia
Nonetheless, Sepinwall and other critics note that the two U.S.-born personas are in many ways the least interesting and by using them as guides we are hindered from looking into corners of Tokyo that might be the most illuminating to explore.
Sepinwall concludes, “This is a decent show, but one that feels like it would be much better if it were willing to be more Japanese.”
Gary Oldman must have rubbed his hands in delight when his agent told him about the role of Jackson Lamb, whom Oldman especially wanted to play.
The part is of an MI:5 spy, and the comparisons between Lamb and Oldman’s Smiley from 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are unavoidable. Smiley was restrained and impassive, while Lamb is equally unrestrained and a toxic presence to his staff of failed spooks. Oldman himself calls the character “Smiley with everything going wrong.”
Putting a humorous new spin on the classic spy movie, Gary Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb and Jack Lowden as River Cartwright in the six-episode series, “Slow Horses,” directed by James Hawkes. Cr: Apple TV+
In Slow Horses, Lamb leads a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI:5. Lamb’s role is to mentally torture these poor souls so they’ll ultimately leave since, as civil servants, they can’t easily be fired. It’s a job that he savors and hates in equal measure.
Broadcast elaborates, “Slow Horses is a quirky sort of spy show. The characters here are the f***-ups of the espionage world, the ones who left a file on a train, or slept with the Venezuelan ambassador’s wife…. They are sent to the MI:5 equivalent of a gulag, to shuffle paper and sweep up the crap.”
Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, Christopher Chung as Roddy Ho, Olivia Cooke as Sidonie “Sid” Baker, and Paul Higgins as Struan Loy in episode 1 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Freddie Fox as Spider Webb, Chris Reilly as Nick Duffy, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner in episode 1 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner in episode 1 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jonathan Pryce as David Cartwright in episode 1 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
They also recognize the DNA of the show — a direct connection to le Carré’s, “but with a pedigree of its own,” recognizing the writing of original author of the books, Mick Herron, and the show’s writing team including Will Smith (Veep, The Thick of It).
As with all Apple TV+ shows, the look of Slow Horses is like a movie, with Danny Cohen serving as cinematographer. In fact, and with some irony, the first 15 minutes of the first episode is a fast-paced hunt for a terrorist that feels like the airport scene from Casino Royale.
Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in episode 2 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Both MI:5 operatives are looking for a bomber. One, named Bond, succeeds, while the other fails. And so the tone of Slow Horses is cemented.
As director James Hawkes told IndieWire, this shading of Bond was intentional. “It’s dropping them into this world in a way that by Hawes’ own admission is designed to ‘give us the shiny, Aston Martin cocktail-swigging bit of the spy genre’ before the ‘handbrake turn into the rest of the show.’ ”
Jack Lowden as River Cartwright and Christopher Chung as Roddy Ho in episode 2 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Olivia Cooke as Sidonie “Sid” Baker and Jack Lowden as River Cartwright in episode 2 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Rosalind Eleazar as Louisa Guy and Dustin Demri-Burns as Min Harper in episode 2 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
If you wondered about why an airport would be happy to stage a fictional bombing incident then give thanks to Stansted Airport which, as Hawes describes it, during lockdown was “very, very closed down for the pandemic. They gave us a tiny window in which, if we turned up, they would give us access. And for once, the pandemic was our friend.”
After the handbrake is applied, Slow Horses ramps up the characters and the narrative of a racially driven kidnapping is spun out.
Director Hawes confessed to KPBS to being scared by writer Herron’s shifting tones, but also thrilled to tackle it.
“People die. There’s blood on the pavements, and yet on a dime the story and the mood and the scene changes and you’re laughing about Lamb’s flatulence,” Hawes said. “All the humor comes from character. As long as the characters are rooted and real and you believe them in the world, I think there’s a lot more space to move. We needed to be sure that we kept the idea of these guys as spies real, and then we could let the humor live alongside.”
Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden in conversation with Jazz TangcayRosalind Eleazar as Louisa Guy and Dustin Demri-Burns as Min Harper in episode 3 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
It’s also the banter that TheSpool extols, clearly part of Will Smith’s talent he used so well in shows like Veep, The Thick of It, and Avenue5. “Even during the scenes of office comedy, the dialogue is quick and quick-witted, peppered with well-timed insults and barely disguised contempt.”
But The Spool also quick to praise director Hawes. “Frequently, he makes choices to play things visually seriously in a way that furthers the comedy. Hawes gives the viewers the visual language they’d expect while letting it clash against the dialogue and the colleagues’ reaction/predicament.”
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They also praise the production design that, in Slow Horses, feels old and ill-used, droopy with time and lack of attention, not unlike Oldman’s Lamb. “Yet, whenever the story heads to MI:5’s headquarters, the sets shine with sterile cleanliness and a sense of the state of the art. Once again, the show gets that the juxtaposition between elements is where the story lives.”
Hawes, in turn, compliments his crew: “it is all realized in the colors and tones of 70s/80s movie palette. Tom Burton and I took inspiration from classic espionage and conspiracy thrillers, planting the show with its history alongside our lead character, firmly in the Cold War.
Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb and Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner in episode 3 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, Rosalind Eleazar as Louisa Guy, and Dustin Demri-Burns as Min Harper in episode 3 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
Rosalind Eleazar as Louisa Guy in episode 3 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
“The photography, polished by cinematographer Danny Cohen, is a combination of subjective: on the character’s shoulders to anchor our point of view, and more observed: using broken frames, through doorways, to give that sense of the watcher, of surveillance, of threat,” he says.
However, it’s The Spool that recognizes a great show when they see one. “There’s something wonderful about how much better spy thriller this group of incompetents, these slow horses, deliver compared to Apple TV+’s grave recent offering Suspicion.
Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner and Paul Higgins as Struan Loy in episode 4 of “Slow Horses.” Cr: Apple TV+
“It turns out foul-mouthed irreverence beats intense self-seriousness.”
The Wonderful Ways “Russian Doll” Asks, “How Do We Start Living?”
In season two of “Russian Doll,” Natasha Lyonne attempts to answer the question, “Now that I’ve stopped dying, how do I start living?” Cr: Netflix
Emmy Award-winning comedy Russian Doll returns for a second season, but this is no Groundhog Day repeat of the formula that made the Netflix show a hit.
Succinctly, in season 1, lead character Nadia Vulvakov (Natasha Lyonne) repeated her birthday every time she died. In season 2, she travels back in time.
It’s about much more than that, of course. “If Russian Doll was yet another comedy about trauma, it was also a comedy about quantum physics — a curious exploration of the possibility of life in other timelines,” says The New Republic.
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Or as Lyonne herself puts it to The Hollywood Reporter, “The idea in season one was, what does it mean to be self-destructive? [The main characters] Alan (Charlie Barnett) and Nadia can’t stop dying until they find a connection. In season two, it’s about: ‘Now that I’ve stopped dying, how do I start living?’ ”
Lyonne elaborated further to The New Yorker, “The bigger question I’m asking is if it’s true that we all have the ability, regarding past trauma, to reorient ourselves around it, or if in fact there is no free will, because it’s a set element of the universe, and therefore we must just radically accept the full weight of the past.”
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Elizabeth Ashley as Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Greta Lee as Maxine in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Sharlto Copley as Chez in season 2 episode 1 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Heavy stuff for a comedy perhaps, but not in the hands of Lyonne, who co-created the series with Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler through her production company Animal Pictures with the producer Danielle Renfrew Behrens and the actress and comedian Maya Rudolph.
The timeline in season two shifts between 1982 and 2022 and is a riff on Back to the Future, The New Yorker remarks in a comment that Lyonne reveals in another interview to be wide of the mark.
She told Deadlinethat, “if season 1 was a take on a Groundhog Day time loop, she wanted season 2 to approach time travel differently than Back to the Future.”
Either way, as Vanity Fair observes, season two doesn’t feel like a huge departure from the concerns of Russian Doll’s first season, which was also haunted by ghosts of the past.
Greta Lee as Maxine in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Rebecca Henderson as Lizzy in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Annie Murphy as Young Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Annie Murphy as Young Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Annie Murphy as Young Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 2 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
In an early scene, Nadia discovers that she has teleported to 1982, the year she was born. This sets her off on a race to uncover a family mystery and its psychological reverberations. Through seven episodes, parts of which were filmed on location in Budapest, Nadia keeps barreling into the past, connecting the dots between her own sense of dislocation, her mother’s mental-health problems, and her Hungarian grandmother’s experience of the Holocaust.
Some aspects of this draw on Lyonne’s own Jewish heritage, as well as her grandmother’s experiences in Hungary in World War II.
As relayed by The New Yorker, Lyonne’s mother was the daughter of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who settled in LA by way of Paris.
The new season of Russian Doll doesn’t draw on Ella’s story directly, but it explores the rift between a traumatized older generation and a vulnerable younger one, and the ripple effects of what Lyonne calls “damaged love.”
Lyonne says, “I joke that there’s a straight line from Hitler to heroin.”
Her friend Michaela Coel, the creator and star of the British drama I May Destroy You, which is about surviving the obliterating aftermath of sexual assault, says that she admired Lyonne’s willingness to delve into her lowest experiences.
Chloe Sevigny as Nora in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Angela Wildflower as Ethel in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Carolyn Michelle Smith as Agnes in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Angela Wildflower as Ethel in season 2 episode 3 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
“I don’t know if this will make sense to anyone other than Natasha, but it feels like we are both living life on some sort of dangerous and thrilling edge,” Coel said to The New Yorker. “We’re on two parallel edges. And we’re shouting at each other, and waving, and talking about how cool it is to be alive.”
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Lyonne has taken over from Headland as showrunner, wrote four of the seven episodes, directed three, and had a hand in every aspect of post-production.
“Directing is this whole other third thing that came into my life, and I’ve never felt so at home,” she tells The New Yorker. “It just turns all my defects into assets. Meaning, you know, being hyper-decisive and obsessive and tireless.”
The new season’s format “allows Lyonne to reveal her character’s real antecedents, the most obvious of whom seems to be the shambling, dry, perpetually easygoing P.I. Philip Marlowe in 1973’s The Long Goodbye,” spies The New Republic.
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Balázs Czukor as Kristof, Greta Lee as Maxine, and Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Sandor Funtek as Lenny and Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Greta Lee as Maxine in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Greta Lee as Maxine in season 2 episode 4 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
It’s a perceptive analogy since, in speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Lyonne says that she and Rudolph are both Robert Altman obsessives.
“The thing that people might not know about myself or Maya is that we have this aesthetic of ‘70s cinema as a state of mind. I just think we have a real shared perspective on the things we love or want to give our attention to.”
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Ákos Orosz as Father Laszlo in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Franciska Farkas as Young Delia in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Franciska Farkas as Young Delia and Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Ákos Orosz as Father Laszlo and Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 5 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
She loaded the show with visual references to the auteur cinema she reveres: Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence, Coppola’s Dracula, Cronenberg’s Videodrome, and attributes the Dutch angles in one episode to Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, and a long tracking shot through a morgue in another to “Spike Lee dolly tricks.”
“The entire season is an Easter egg,” she says to The New Yorker.
Perhaps as a consequence, The New Yorker concludes, the season is more shambolic than the first. “As Nadia’s adventures expand into multiple time lines, the story becomes disorientingly twisty. The result is less a puzzle box than a messy metaphysical punk opera, for worse and for better.”
Here, cinematographer Ula Pontikos discusses the series.
Nominated for the 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour), cinematographer Ula Pontikos, BSC breathes life into the past of Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne). The episode that earned her the nod, “Nowhen,” introduces the time travel dynamic that will shape the course of the story throughout season two.
Equipped with the Sony Venice digital cinema camera, instead of the RED digital camera DP Christopher Teague used in Season 1, Pontikos shares with IndieWire’s Erik Adams and Chris O’Falt why she believed each decade needed its own specific lens:
“For the second season of RussianDoll, we take an audacious leap into time travel and the metaverse as the show delves into Natasha Lyonne’s character’s past. The timeline jumps from 2022, 1980s, 1960s and then to 1944,” she says.
“We conceived of each decade as having an individual tone and the lenses were essential to making it happen. For the 1980s New York, we chose Baltars and Varotal Zoom. They create amazing bokeh and offsets the clean look of Leitz Summilux-C, which were the lenses that we chose for the modern timeline. We used Super Baltars for the 1940s. Venice 6k gave us shallow depth of field and a larger sensor. Period elements were shot on a deeper stop with 4K resolution to maximize the impact of time travel and demands of the final delivery.”
Through Animal Pictures, Lyonne is currently developing shows with several female creators, including Alia Shawkat and the Russian Doll writer Cirocco Dunlap. She compares her friendships with other women in the business to the fellowship among such men as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Paul Schrader in ‘70s Hollywood.
“It’s almost like they had a pickup-basketball-game community of filmmaking, where they came around and saw each other’s stuff.”
For Russian Doll, she credits Netflix and Universal for allowing her “to assemble sort of the Avengers of the best lady writers that we can find,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s the second time we’ve had an all-female writer’s room. They’re knockouts — such cerebral hotshots. Because it’s a show where we can philosophically wonder: What does it mean to be alive?”
Rebecca Henderson as Lizzy and Greta Lee as Maxine in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Vanessa Clifton/Netflix
Elizabeth Ashley as Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Vanessa Clifton/Netflix
Elizabeth Ashley as Ruth Brenner in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Vanessa Clifton/Netflix
Anoop Desai as Salim and Ritesh Rajan as Farran in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Vanessa Clifton/Netflix
Gergely Csiby as VoPo Officer and Carolyn Michelle Smith as Agnes in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: András D. Hadjú/Netflix
Carolyn Michelle Smith as Agnes in season 2 episode 6 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: András D. Hadjú/Netflix
Because of the number of jobs Lyonne holds in the production, the experience is made up of a Russian doll’s worth of perspectives.
“When I’m in the writers’ room, I’m much more of a stressed out person who looks tired and worn down,” Lyonne noted to Variety. “In prep, all of a sudden it’s that person, but with a lot of parkas, because directing loves parkas and sneakers.”
“Then this third character emerges — now I’m inside of Nadia and it’s go time,” she continued. “It’s always such a trip, because at first, I’m feeling out the spaces of her, and then I realize that the joy of the character is there’s so much room to make big and small choices. And then, in the edit, this hobgoblin emerges who just lives on Sweetgreen.”
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri and Carolyn Michelle Smith as Agnes in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri and Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Vanessa Clifton/Netflix
Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov and Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Charlie Barnett as Alan Zaveri and Natasha Lyonne as Nadia Vulvokov in season 2 episode 7 of “Russian Doll.” Cr: Netflix
Want more? Listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour with Mike Katzif and Aisha Harris as they discuss season 2 of the hit Netflix series, including its treatment of intergenerational trauma and how we grapple with the past.
“Really, what this show is about is connection and grappling with the past,” Katzif comments:
“And I think so many movies and shows right now are dealing with that because I think we’re sort of at this point where we are sort of wondering to know, like, what are our connections to how we got to where we are? Whether that’s historically or personally, I think there’s this searching feeling that we’re having where we feel, like, a little untethered. And so these kind of shows, I think — or movies — allow us to grapple with that history, to kind of get into our own psyche a little bit ourselves and wonder, how do we be present right now? Natasha Lyonne has sort of spoken about how this show, in its second season, where the first season was sort of them embracing life again, in some ways, this is sort of like, now that you’re here, what are you going to do with the time that you have left?”
Listen to the full episode in the audio player below:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent:” It’s a Cinematic Love Letter to Nick Cage and Why Not?
Everyone has their favorite Nicolas Cage moment, right? For the record, mine is in Con Air when hitherto quiet-as-mouse convict Poe let’s rip after a righteous killer fails to put the bunny back in the box.
The actor carries a remarkable amount of goodwill among audiences even while carrying a lot of baggage in sub-B movie derivatives, which have tended to cloud his post-Leaving Las Vegas Oscar-winning career high.
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Lionsgate
The charm has seen Cage-isms go viral in numerous internet memes, such as the “Not the bees!” scene from the ill-starred remake of cult classic The Wicker Man.
This well of affection has also prompted filmmaker Tom Gormican to write an entire film based around Cage’s film history and public persona and starring the man himself.
Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten wrote “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” as a love letter to Nick Cage’s history and public persona. Nick Cage as himself. Cr: LionsgateJacob Scipio as Carlos and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
The Lionsgate feature The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent won’t win many awards, but it will confirm in the hearts and minds of Cage fans just what a stand-up guy he is.
“I had to play with it and become self-aware about it and try to work with what had happened to me in terms of the internet,” Cage tells MovieMaker. “There are other actors who are far more famous than I am who I don’t think have had to look so closely at memefication as I have. And so, I had to do something with it. And I think this movie gave me an opportunity to play with that.”
Nick Cage as himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Gormican and his writing partner, Kevin Etten, wrote the script for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent on spec, having never met Cage. They had no idea whether he would say yes to starring in the movie, or if it would ever get made.
“We decided that we’d have to complete the script, and then we’d take that and present it to him,” Gormican explains to ScreenRant. “Even that was sort of daunting, so we decided to write him a letter to basically indicate our intentions; that this was a love letter to Nicolas Cage’s career, and that it was like a celebration of all the things that he’s done. It was important to us to convey that to Nic to get him to come on board.”
“Nick has become something that transcends being an actor,” Gormican observes in the film’s production notes. “He’s become a cultural figure. As culture gets stranger and stranger and fashion choices get more outlandish, you can trace like a direct line back to the patron saint of strangeness, Nicolas Cage. Just seeing his face makes people happy. That’s really interesting and made me want to dig in further and find out who he actually is.”
Cage picks up the story at Digital Spy, saying, “I got a very well-written letter from Tom. I could tell from his letter that he wasn’t only about sending me up, or lapsing into a mockery of an SNL sketch. He wanted to create a real character, a true person. I started to believe maybe this is worth taking the jump. There was tremendous downside, but there was also wonderful upside.
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
“The whole time it was a high-wire act. How do I facilitate his vision, the comedy he wanted to bring which was an anxiety-filled, neurotic interpretation of so-called Nick Cage, and still not embarrass my family?”
Cage jumped in with both feet, coming up with the fictional version of himself that he would play on-screen. This was the one in which, while promoting David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, he appeared on BBC talk show Wogan with a performance he now finds embarrassing.
Paco Leon as Lucas Guiterrez in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Paco Leon as Lucas Guiterrez and Alessandra Mastronardi as Gabriella in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Ike Barinholtz as Martin in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
“After performing a handspring and several kung fu-style moves, he whipped off his T-shirt, thrust it at the startled host, and put his leather jacket back on over his naked chest before proceeding with the interview,” relates The New York Times. ‘I’m just going to have a blast!’ he declared.”
It’s the manic, borderline insane version of Cage — the one that actually many fans seem to love — that he resurrects in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
He plays “Nick Cage,” a debt-ridden, emotionally tortured version of his contemporary self, but he also plays “Nicky Cage,” an obnoxious, de-age-ified replica of his old self.
It sounds confusing on the page — but it’s a pretty simple action caper on the screen liberally peppered with some meta-comedic nods to Cage, the actor.
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
In the film a billionaire drug dealer, Javi (played by Pedro Pascal), offers $1 million for Cage to make a paid birthday party appearance in Mallorca.
Javi has a lavish shrine to Cage, housing an array of props, costumes — and even some life-size recreations of the actor from the action-thriller Face/Off.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
“I loved building that set,” says production designer Kevin Kavanaugh. “I had a great time picking out different elements from Nick’s films that would signify that film and his amazing career. We also recreated some props, including the burnt bunny from Con Air, the diapers from Raising Arizona, and the hand from Moonstruck.”
Additional props in Javi’s special room include screenplays (Lord of War, Leaving Las Vegas); slates (Valley Girl); and treasured props, like the golden guns from Face/Off, the lottery ticket from It Could Happen to You, and the torch from National Treasure.
Nick Cage as himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
In a set-up that feels close to the knuckle, Cage’s fictional alter ego is depressed, drunk, and on the verge of quitting acting, and so accepts the million-dollar offer to pay off his debts. It’s public record that Cage nearly bankrupted himself but he refuses to admit he ever accepted a paycheck for a movie just to avoid going broke.
“The one truth is, yeah, I was going through an incredible financial strain that lasted for 13 years,” he tells MovieMaker. “I made the very clear decision: I’m not going bankrupt. I’m going to work my way through this mess. And, lo and behold, I did, and I’m proud of that. But I never took a role that I didn’t think I could bring something to, and I turned down a lot of roles. That’s the story people don’t see. I was working my way out of something.”
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Critics began to change their tune after Panos Cosmatos’ operatic 2018 horror film Mandy, which Cage counts among his best work.
“I’m not this guy who’s driven to be a movie star,” he says “I’m someone that actually, thankfully, has managed to stay in the independently-spirited format and do the dramas that I love so much, like [Michael Sarnoski’s] Pig. I think that’s probably my best movie I’ve ever made.”
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Now, instead of looking at his body of work as a career to be measured with Oscars and coffee spoons, he views it as a series of piecemeal opportunities.
“I never really had a career. I only had work, and that’s the way I chose to look at it,” he says to MovieMaker, “It’s so hard to talk about this movie,” Cage laughs after getting jumbled up between referring to Nicolas Cage the person and Nicolas Cage the movie character. “It’s so triangular. I don’t know what to say.”
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Tiffany Haddish as Vivian and Nick Cage as himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
So is Unbearable Weight any good? It’s got decent if not rave reviews from the US press. Typical of them is AV Club, which concludes:
“If the movie were just meme-able moments, it might run out of steam, even with Cage delivering them practically nonstop. Thankfully, there’s an actual plot, which allows everyone else (and the film as a whole) to spoof less Cage-specific tropes. At the same time, in idolizing Cage’s nouveau-shamanic style — such as it is — the movie even makes time to poke fun at method acting, simultaneously throwing a bit of shade at actors like Jared Leto who swear by the practice.”
Jacob Scipio as Carlos in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Nick Cage as himself, Lilly Sheen as Addy Cage, and Sharon Horgan as Olivia in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
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Tiffany Haddish as Vivian and Nick Cage as himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Tiffany Haddish as Vivian in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
Several point out that Cage has been in a meta-comedy featuring himself before. That was Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman, in which Cage also gave a dual performance.
In comparison, The Guardian says this feels lightweight.
Nick Cage as himself and Pedro Pascal as Javi Gutierezz in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Cr: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate
“Cage simply plays Cage,” says reviewer Peter Bradshaw, “in that utterly committed, strangely uncomplicated way that has won the hearts of fans who declare themselves on the right side of the laugh-with/laugh-at dividing line.”
“Moon Knight:” How to Make Superhero Storytelling A New (Ancient) Thing
“Moon Knight,” courtesy of Marvel Studios
There is a lot riding on Moon Knight. To start a new origin story in MCU’s fourth phase is a risk, especially when it surfaces among recognizable IP like Hawkeye, Loki and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. There is also fan chatter that the MCU is in decline, especially now that The Avengers aren’t avenging anymore.
But the studio that turned WandaVision into a serene salutation of family values and maternal shelter must never be underestimated. In fact, the MCU has thrown everything at Moon Night — even if some think it may be a bit too much.
Director Mohamed Diab’s debut series for Marvel, “Moon Knight,” starring Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant, pushes boundaries and brings the flavor of Egypt into the MCU. Cr: Marvel Studios
UPROXX senior entertainment writer Mike Ryan, while interviewing MCU debut director Mohamed Diab, questioned the mix of themes on display in Moon Knight. “Moon Knight is a very complicated show. One that, on paper, probably shouldn’t work. A show that dabbles in horror, comedy, adventure, and a serious discussion about dissociative identity disorder,” he writes.
It takes a monumental effort from actor and executive producer Oscar Isaac to makes sense of the first couple of episodes that serve as story and character introductions. He plays a nervous London museum geek Steven Grant, but at the same time also plays Mark Spector, a highly trained mercenary figure. Isaac is frequently acting against himself in scenes and even brought in his look-alike brother to act with him and help him through the juggling act.
Don’t forget the Egyptian moon god Khonshu, with the booming voice of F. Murray Abraham, who is controlling Mark and now Steven. And that Mark also sometimes becomes the entity known as Moon Knight.
Fighting all of them is Ethan Hawk in the form of Arthur Harrow, who wants to awaken the Egyptian demon goddess Ammit. Grant must temporarily let Spector — and Khonshu — take the reins.
Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant and Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac and director Mohamed Diab on the set of “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Maya Calamawy as Layla El-Faouly in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Add in a location jump from London in the first two episodes to Egypt where Steven and Marc’s enemies converge upon them. They must navigate their complex identities while thrust into a deadly mystery among the powerful gods of ancient Egypt.
In anyone else’s hands, other than Marvel’s, this could have gone south very quickly. Even UPROXX’s Ryan confesses his initial misgivings about the show, “Even writing this out is confusing and I’m still a bit dumbfounded that this series doesn’t just work, but is excellent.”
And work it does. In fact, the first episode is a supremely paced, acted, laugh out loud treat through the important exposition needed to get you up to speed. Isaac should be congratulated for keeping it all together and it’s the best the MCU has been for a while.
But The Wrap wasn’t underestimating how hard it is for a new MCU director to introduce a completely new Marvel comic hero. Drew Taylor, writing for The Wrap, asked Diab just the right question: “You had to cover all this ground including having to introduce a new character to the MCU that is very tonally different than anything we’ve seen before. Could you talk about what that was like?”
Diab wasn’t shying away from the task at hand. “Marvel had an intention of pushing the envelope,” he said. “Hiring someone like me, they took a risk. And I used every opportunity that I had to push as much as I can, be as brutal as I can. Again, for the story, not as a gimmick, and for the drama to get dark as possible, for the look to be different.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Moon Knight had no connection to what had gone before in the MCU. There are no references, so it was a “standalone” as far as the way it looked. “A lot of people are giving me the comment that when they see the pilot, if there was no Marvel logo, you wouldn’t know that this is a Marvel show, which is something I’m so proud of.”
But apart from being Egyptian, Diab’s legitimacy for directing most of Moon Knight’s six episodes wasn’t originally clear. The writer-director was known for his hard-hitting dramas in his native country. The Hollywood Reporterfilled in his achievements up to the point of the unexpected call from Marvel.
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
“Having made a name for himself as writer of 2007’s The Island, one of the highest-grossing Egyptian films of all time, followed three years later by his directorial debut, Cairo 678, Diab hit new heights in 2016 when he opened Cannes’ Un Certain Regard with Clash.”
Set during the Egyptian revolution of 2013, Clash features a story that unfolds entirely in the back of a police van as deadly protests rage outside.
“The film was widely praised throughout the world for its efforts to humanize all sides of the conflict. But following the success, its deeply sensitive subject matter would lead to a coordinated pushback in Egypt against both the film and filmmaker.”
Looking to focus on the American market, Diab moved to the US soon after, and was contacted by Marvel just a couple of years after arriving in Michigan, where he was living with relatives. A 200-page pitch he and his wife Sarah Goher wrote sealed the deal for the new show.
Diab’s vision of bringing the flavor of Egypt into Moon Knight was a driving force from the start. He had publicly exposed the film Wonder Woman 1984 and Dwayne Johnson’s forthcoming Black Adam for their depictions of Egypt, as Ryan noted at UPROXX.
Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow and Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Ironically, Moon Knight was entirely filmed in large-scale practical sets on soundstages at Origo Studios in Budapest, Hungary. No shooting in London and none in Egypt. Diab, however, was happy with how Marvel recreated Cairo for the show. “Marvel really gave me everything that I dreamed of to create Egypt. And I got all the Egyptian extras there. People, some of them were so emotional, told me, ‘I haven’t been in Egypt for five years, and I feel I am there.’ “
Maya Calamawy as Layla El-Faouly and Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac and director Mohamed Diab on the set of “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac with directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson on the set of “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
In the final analysis, it is the might of the MCU that carries this show home. The extent that the studio goes to add the final gloss to the story is impressive. For instance, production designer Stefania Cella and her team took three months to build some of the main sets, effort that wasn’t lost on the main lead. “What Stefania did with these sets and the production design is just staggering,” Isaac commented. “The reason why it’s so important for me is not because I can feel like I’m really there, but because I see an artist bring their top game.”
As for the naysayers who think the MCU is struggling, Diab has one message for them. “That’s why after 13 years Marvel is [still a] success. When everyone thinks, ‘Okay, this is the year of the superhero fatigue,’ that they know how to reinvent themselves. And I think Moon Knight and the whole world that we created is something that is a testament to that.”
Oscar Isaac as Mr. Knight in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant in “Moon Knight.” Cr: Marvel Studios
Cinematographer Gregory Middleton, ASC, CSC received a nomination for the 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for his work on the firth episode of Moon Knight, “Asylum.”
In an interview with IndieWire’s Erik Adams and Chris O’Falt, Middleton explains how they utilized the ARRI Alexa Mini LF to film the series paired with prime lenses from ARRI’s Signature and Compact ranges:
“The style of cinematography varied as the story progressed, but one style we returned to often was to be close to the first-person experience of Oscar Isaac’s characters. I really liked how the slightly wider focal lengths made his closeups feel very intimate,” he says.
“The Signature primes are quite light which helped our Mini LF be made very mobile for handheld and compact spaces. We occasionally used the Compact series when even smaller profile was needed. The Signatures being very fast (T1.4) was useful as well in certain scenes. Having them all match perfectly was essential for our multiple camera ‘twinning’ scenes and to have multiple units with matching optics on such a large production.”
Want more? Check out this interview with VFX supervisor Sean Faden as he discusses the intensive pre-production planning that went in to creating the conversations where Steven Grant and Marc Spector (both played by Oscar Isaac) talk to each other through mirrors:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Director Robert Eggers battles with himself to deliver the definitive Viking movie with “The Northman,” starring Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth. Cr: Focus Features
If you’re going to watch The Northman at the cinema this weekend, you are already braced for the ride. Reviews consistently describe the experience as visceral, primal and raw — which is of course just the ticket director Robert Eggers was aiming for.
His own script called for scenes “that should smell of mildew and rot, with human bones sticking out of the mud,” according to an extensive interview in The New Yorker, which tracked the film’s progress during post-production.
“The Northman,” starring Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth. Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
The Guardian judged the $70 million Viking epic as “ambitious” and “preposterous,” a film “that comes on like a head-smashing mashup of Beowulf, Hamlet and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, told in growly tones that are more Dark Knight than Green Knight.”
Another Guardian writer calls the feature “vast, bonkers and exhilarating,” led by a hulking Alexander Skarsgård as an exiled Icelandic prince out to avenge his father’s murder and reclaim his kingdom.
Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth and Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
Director Robert Eggers on the set of “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
But this is not a revenge movie in the mold of Gladiatoror Braveheart, which Eggers admits he could never make if he tried.
“My best intention of doing Gladiator or Braveheart is still… weirder,” he said to The New Yorker’s Sam Knight.
Eggers wrote the script with Sjón, an Icelandic novelist and poet, to whom he was introduced by Bjork, who has a cameo in the film alongside stars Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy, alongside Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang and Willem Dafoe.
Speaking with Charles Bramesco at Little White Lies, the filmmaker himself says, “this is in some respects me trying to do Conan the Barbarian by way of Andrei Rublev,” by which he means a battle with himself to make “the definitive Viking movie” — while not pandering to the nihilistic violence that appeals to those with right wing sensibilities.
“I can’t believe I made something that insanely macho,” he told Nick Chen at Dazed. “Sometimes the violence needs to be thrilling because that’s the source material and worldview of Viking culture. Also, it needs to perform like Gladiator at the box office. But I don’t want to glorify violence as a filmmaker. How do I walk that line? I don’t know.”
Director Robert Eggers on the set of “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
The trade press has been obsessed with another battle, too, this time of the auteur against the studio. Eggers’ previous two movies were critically well received, his debut The Witch, made $40 million on an indie budget. That attracted New Regency to invest heavily in the project, with Focus Features distributing in the US, and a degree of attention to his vision that he was both eyes-open about but is still unwilling to compromise on — much.
Claes Bang as Fjölnir in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
That included working with his regular set of core collaborators, including editor Louise Ford and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, whose “frostbitten cinematography allows the film to flatten mud-and-shit history into the stuff of ‘Elden Ring’ high fantasy until they feel equally true,” according to David Ehrlich’s review in IndieWire.
It meant shooting on 35mm rather than the supposedly cheaper digital and taking an ambitious approach to shooting action scenes with a single camera eschewing second units, handheld cameras and not doing pickups.
“We’re trying to propel the story and keep people totally immersed in the world. That’s the main creative reason,” Eggers told Eric Kohn at IndieWire.
“Also, my fetish or obsession with the detail of verisimilitude of the physical world is something that cannot be a distraction from the story. If it’s a single-camera, then you’re always focused on the story. You’re not cutting away to how cool the hunting dogs look.
“But it is hard. When we were in prep, I was like, ‘We are never going be able to do this. We are never going to be able to finish storyboarding this movie, we’re going to get completely behind, and we’re going to fail.’ I know why people shoot movies like this multi-camera because this is just impossible. But we stuck to it.”
To a large extent the studio indulged Eggers’s idiosyncrasies, resulting “in a textured aesthetic and a hurtling, immersive perspective that you rarely see in today’s carefully vetted, committee-made action movies,” Guy Lodge notes in The Guardian. “It’s anathema to mainstream studios with an eye on the clock and a hand on the purse strings.”
Ingvar Sigurdsson as The Sorcerer in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandil in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandil in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
The long takes brought their own challenges in the edit since Ford was left with very little spare footage or flexibility that might get them out of a jam — or a tough set of studio notes — later on.
“Like, there’s not a lot of alternatives,” Eggers told The New Yorker. “The stakes are really high, and without, you know, ‘coverage,’” he said, using air quotes.
To The Guardian he added, “I hadn’t had to do test screenings before. My first two films were all tested for marketing, but I didn’t have to change anything. So this was new, and as much as I didn’t like that process, I did learn something from it.”
IndieWire’s Ehrlich noted that Eggers “is so focused on the emotional fidelity of [the film] that he seems afraid of making any concessions to melodrama. He seems afraid of leaving any openings that a studio might have been able to exploit in order to manufacture a certain audience response.”
The director handed the studio the final cut, and is candid that was a risk he was willing to take.
“The studio took a big risk on letting somebody made two sensationalist arthouse movies to make a big fucking Viking movie single-camera with all of his heads of departments,” he told Kohn. “Frankly, our resumes did not warrant us making this movie, and they let us do it, which is amazing. I promised them the most entertaining Robert Eggers movie I could make.”
Speaking with The New Yorker, Eggers had stated that post-production on the film “was the most painful process of my life,” which he clarified further with IndieWire.
“I think if I’d had total control and was left alone, I’d be in a really bad position right now in the marketplace. I needed the pressure of the studio to make the most entertaining version of this movie. This is the cut I’m proud of, but my instinct is not to make entertainment. I mean, entertainment was seventh on the list of The Witch and fifteenth on The Lighthouse.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
He added, “If I slavishly took the studio’s notes, the film would suck, because they’re not filmmakers. That’s why they hire filmmakers to make the films. But I think how we survived is that [myself] and all of my collaborators [were] determined to make the film we wanted to, and we were not going to stop until we were proud of it. It would’ve been so easy to say, “Fuck the studio, they’re giving me all these notes, I hate this! They’re ruining my movie!” That’s the easy way out. What made it so hard was to stick with it until we were happy.”
He is on record as being in the frame for big budget studio projects, telling The New Yorker he’d like “to make a film this big. I’d like to make one even bigger. But, without control, I don’t know. It’s too hard on my person.”
Eggers might be seen by Kevin Feige as another in the line of indie directors who lend fresh eyes to a Marvel film.
Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrún in director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman.” Cr: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features
Eggers’ response, “I’ve only done self-generated work. I understand how fortunate I am to be in that situation. Even though I didn’t have final cut, we went into this knowing it was a Robert Eggers movie, and all of what that’s going to be. I don’t see how that could be beneficial on a movie where I’m a director for hire. Everything I’m at doing is antithetical to making a Marvel movie.”
Want more? In the video below, director Robert Eggers and Alexander Skarsgård break down the scene showing Amleth’s return as a Viking:
Or listen to the two discuss how fate brought them together, Egger’s thoughts on masculinity, how much the film changed during production, and more in this interview with CinemaBlend:
In a Q&A with Picturehouse, Eggers discusses his reasons for not liking Vikings, why he didn’t want to make a Viking film, and how the Icelandic landscapes and legends eventually won him over:
Eggers breaks down a pivotal sequence featuring a battle against the undead in The New York Times series, Anatomy of a Scene, noting how the shots in the moonlight looked “almost black and white, to the point where I wonder if my DP and I made a mistake.”
These moments were based on the time Eggers’s longtime collaborator, director of photography Jarin Blaschke, spent in remote parts of Africa, far from any light pollution. The visuals were enhanced with the addition of an ashen color to the clothing and sets.
The scene was shot in long, unbroken takes in a vertically roomy space to accommodate the six-foot-four Alexander Skarsgård and seven-foot-one Ian Whyte. This approach allowed audiences to be “more immersed in the fight,” Eggers says. “And it’s also easier to follow each beat of the fight as a story.”
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Ennio Morricone, one of the most influential composers in the history of cinema, says “Music is an abstract element added to the film and it’s not necessary – but when we need to hear it, we need to let it be free.” Cr: Dogwoof Cr: Dogwoof
A documentary about the great film composer Ennio Morricone might logically start with the signature tune from one of his classic westerns. Instead, Ennio begins very quietly with just the ticking of a metronome and footage of the man himself working studiously — and working out — in his paper-strewn flat.
“Watching Ennio working is like watching an athlete,” comments director Roland Joffe in the film, which premiered at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival and is being released to cinemas.
Morricone, who is interviewed for this film before his death aged 92 in 2020, comes across as a quiet, humble, intelligent man who took composition very seriously but not without humor. He also elevated music composition for film to an artform.
The Italian is one of the most influential composers in the history of cinema, with a filmography that includes more than 70 award-winning films. This documentary, produced by Dogwoof and directed by Giussepe Tornatore (with whom he worked on several films including Cinema Paradiso), features snippets of testimony from Wong Kar Wai, Bernardo Bertolucci, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, John Williams, Hans Zimmer and Bruce Springsteen.
Ennio Morricone with “Ennio” director Giuseppe Tornatore. Cr: Dogwoof
“This was the most creative music I had heard in a theatre,” says Springsteen on watching The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, “and the only one I rushed out of the cinema to buy the music for.”
These interviews were filmed over five years and are intercut with fragments of Morricone’s private life, recordings from his acclaimed world concert tours and copious clips of classic films as you’d expect, but it is Morricone’s own observations which provide most enlightening.
“In the movies mixing sound without a balance (without silence) can damage the movie and the music,” Morricone says. “Music is an abstract element added to the film and it’s not necessary — but when we need to hear it, we need to let it be free.”
His formative years as a jazz trumpeter and avant garde musician, notably with “Il Gruppo” (with whom he performed for 20 years), play heavily into his inventive sound for cinema.
Gunfight At Red Sands and Bullets Don’t Argue — both from 1963 — were his first westerns, for which he is credited under the pseudonym Dan Savio because of the opprobrium he felt he would receive from fellow composers.
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Classical composer Goffredo Petrassi, for instance, thought scoring music for film “totally anti-artistic.” Petrassi believed, says one commentator, that “commercial music for the cinema was, for an academic musician, like prostitution.”
Yet director Sergio Leone liked what he heard, in particular the innovative use of guitars to sound like riding horses.
Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. Cr: Dogwoof
“He came to my house,” Morricone recounts. Under the impression he was meeting Dan Savio, Leone was surprised to find in Morricone an old schoolmate who, as 10-year-olds, had shared the same classes.
“That afternoon he took me to see [Akira Kurasawa’s] Yojimbo and explained to me his next film, A Fistful of Dollars had something in common with it.”
The genesis of this soundtrack came from an arrangement Morricone had made years earlier for the record album Pastures of Plenty by American singer Peter Tevis.
“Leone liked it and said why don’t you find me the backing track,” Morricone, who rewrote it and invented a new melody with a whistle, recalls.
There’s even an interview with musician and frequent collaborator Alessandro Alessandroni, who provided that whistle for the film’s score.
“When I saw the movie I was quite surprised because that music is unique,” says Eastwood. “At that particular time no one had tried something so operatic for a western. His music helped dramatize me — which is hard to do.”
Along with the whistle, the score for A Fistfull of Dollars included an electric guitar, the lashing of a whip, the piffero, an anvil, and a bell. He essentially set out a new language for cinematic composition.
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
Yet Morricone surprisingly admits that he always disliked this score, perhaps because he felt it was a straitjacket to his creativity.
“I always encouraged Sergio to forget it in later films but he insisted ‘give me some trumpet, do the whistle,’” he says.
Indeed, Oliver Stone appears saying that he wanted the composer to work on one of his films and that he instructed Morricone to reproduce the quirky sounds that appear in the Dollars trilogy, likening them to the cartoon sounds of Tom and Jerry.
Morricone was so offended he refused.
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
For the Italian it was his way or the highway. He was on the point of walking out on movies on several occasions where the director wanted to use pre-recorded music and not rely exclusively on Morricone’s original composition. For Morricone this was more than a point of pride; having a blank slate was the only way he felt free to create.
In editing For A Few Dollars More, for instance, Leone had used the trumpet theme (called Deguello) from the John Wayne western Rio Bravo as temp music. It fitted the scene perfectly and Leone wanted to keep it. Morricone objected
“You want to use an existing piece in the main scene, and I just do the background music? I said, ‘I quit.’”
Rather than give up Morricone, Leone gave up the Deguello, but asked the maestro to write him something similar.
“I thought of a song I’d written years earlier for a TV show sung by one of the Peters Sisters, a contralto with a deep extraordinary voice.”
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
Morricone rewrote it for trumpeter Michel Lacerenza, incorporating the tonal flutters to mimic the Deguello. Also in For A Few Dollars More, Morricone quotes the opening of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (later deployed by Andrew Lloyd Webber in Phantom of the Opera) to give a pivotal gunfight an operatic grandeur.
During this time, “Sergio realized how important Ennio was to the soundtrack and that Ennio was beginning to find his own audience,” says Bruno Battisti D’Amario, the guitarist who played on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
Raffaella Leone, Sergio’s daughter and a producer in her own right, says there was a complicity between the two “also a lot of discussions — let’s say violent ones. I think that my father depended on Ennio’s music and wanted his movies to depend on music. The music was much more than a soundtrack it essentially was the dialogue of the movie.”
The character played by Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West is a case in point. He plays the harmonica more than he speaks.
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
“It is a voice,” says Raffaella Leone. “Entrusting so much of that character to someone else meant putting yourself in their hands. Leone never worked with anyone else.”
Morricone’s music became so integral to Leone that he even had the theme playing on set while they shot Once Upon A Time in America with Robert DeNiro. Morricone had written the score months, even years, before the film was made.
“On this film, the collaboration with Sergio began when he described the movie to me,” he says. “He described it to me in great detail even explaining the framing.”
Synonymous with Leone as he is, the composer worked with a multitude of directors and in all sorts of genres. One of his most celebrated was for period epic The Mission (1986), directed by Joffe, for which Morricone combined an oboe theme with ethnic instruments and a motet — an ancient Catholic musical form.
“There was nothing I was more sure of than that he would win the Oscar,” says the film’s producer, David Puttnam.
Instead, the award went to Herbie Hancock for his arrangement on Round Midnight, a controversial choice given that most of the music used in the film pre-existed.
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
The snub rankled Morricone. “Herbie Hancock is a good musician, a good pianist and a good trumpeter but half of the film’s music was repertoire and should not have been in the original music category.”
About The Hateful Eight, Morricone says, “I felt like I was avenging myself on the western movie.” That’s because Tarantino wanted Morricone to emulate his work for Leone, but the composer had no interest in repeating himself so he wrote a symphony.
Ironically, it was the only one of six nominations for which Morricone won the Oscar.
Tarantino himself calls Ennio his favorite composer. “I don’t mean movie composer — that’s ghetto. I’m talking about Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert.”
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
That may be hyperbolic, but his legacy is huge and grown in stature in recent years. Tarantino says he grew up listening to “Ecstasy of Gold,” the electrifying soundtrack to Eli Wallach running around the graveyard in “Ugly,” and used by Metallica to warm up the crowd every time they go on stage.
“I love the sounds, the layering in his music,” says the band’s frontman, James Hetfield. “He has made a lot of people sing his song and it gets my heart going.”
The only regret from Morricone in such a storied career is that when Stanley Kubrick asked him to do A Clockwork Orange it was Sergio Leone who turned it down. He wanted Morricone to himself.
Ennio Morricone. Cr: Dogwoof
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“A Very British Scandal” Is Still Pretty Scandalous (60 Years Later)
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Director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
It was 1993 when Sara Phelps, the writer of A Very British Scandal, first heard about the story of the “Dirty Duchess,” as she was called in her obituary. Speaking to the BBC, Phelps recalled the story that lead her to write the new drama series.
“A Very British Scandal is the tempestuous marriage and the bitter, brutal divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. It’s a story about a woman who refused to be slut shamed, who refused to go quietly and refused to do as she was told.
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell and Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
“She set fire to the expectation of her class, gender and her sex rather than go quietly. She put the private lives of the wealthy, the landed and the titled all over the front pages, not the untouchable great and good, but bare forked animals.
“She was spoiled, troubled, complex, demanding, infuriating, beautiful, stylish, silly, generous, vain, bloody-minded, very funny and brave. I love her for all of it.”
A Very British Scandal turns this scandal inside out in order to explore the social and political climate of post-war Britain, looking at attitudes towards women, and asking whether institutional misogyny was widespread at the time.
As her contemporaries, the press, and the judiciary sought to vilify her, Margaret Campbell kept her head held high with bravery and resilience, refusing to go quietly as she was betrayed by her friends and publicly shamed by a society that reveled in her fall from grace.
The series focuses on the divorce of the Duke (Paul Bettany) and Duchess of Argyll (Claire Foy), one of the most notorious, extraordinary and callous legal cases of the 20th century.
From the latest advances in virtual production to shooting the perfect oner, filmmakers are continuing to push creative boundaries. Packed with insights from top talents, go behind the scenes of feature film production with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
Paul Bettany and Claire Foy on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany and Claire Foy on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Famed for her charisma, beauty and style, Campbell, the Duchess of Argyll, dominated the front pages, as a divorce featuring accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, secret recording, bribery and an explicit polaroid picture — all played out in the white-hot glare of the 1960s media.
The series director, Anne Sewitsky, explained to the BBC why the story is so relevant to today after more than 60 years. “I think it is relevant in the way of looking back and seeing a woman who thought she was equal, and that the fight was equal, but in the end she loses because she’s a woman and because she can be shamed.
Paul Bettany on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell and Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany and Claire Foy on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
“They did terrible things to her, such as trying to commit her into a mental hospital, saying how she was a highly sexualized woman because of the way she was acting. It’s important to be able to look back as I don’t think the world is like that now. In our story I feel that we look mainly on the relationship and the love story between them but the result of that is that she’s shamed.”
The series is also noteworthy for its look, which could be described as a velvety, high-contrast aesthetic. Jon Fauer of Film and Digital Times asked cinematographer Si Bell about his choices. “We used ARRI ALEXA Mini with Canon K35 primes. We tested a lot of lenses. We tried large format, anamorphic, different cameras. I had shot Peaky Blinders on the MONSTRO 8K.
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
“We were talking about a very fluid style requiring a very light handheld camera, with lenses that flared and had a soft feel. We loved the K35 lenses and what they brought. Because we weren’t locked into having to shoot full 4K, we could use the Mini, and the K35 covered the Mini’s Super35 image area.
“Anne Sewitsky, the director, and I liked the vintage Canon K35 primes for their look, size and close focus ability. There’s a lot of dynamic camera movement, handheld, and very, very close shots where we’re really in the faces of the characters.
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Alan Peebles/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Claire Foy on the set of “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
“It was funny, because when we first started shooting, Claire Foy asked me, “Why are you so close?” When she did The Crown, they were much further back on longer lenses. We knew this series was going to be compared to The Crown — it’s a similar period, it’s Claire Foy, it’s royal, it’s the UK, and it has similar locations. We wanted something unique and different. We had to try to create a look that was different.
“It was more vibrant, more colorful, handheld, close, flare-y, and soft.”
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Nick Wall/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell and Julia Davis as Maureen Guinness in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Christopher Raphael/Amazon Studios
Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell and Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell in director Anne Sewitsky’s “A Very British Scandal.” Cr: Amazon Studios
Foy, who took the lead role of the limited series, commented on why she thought the story chimed all these years later. “Margaret’s sexuality seems to have become another personality or something outside of herself, which I find that really bizarre and strange. Calling her the ‘Dirty Duchess’ is so misogynistic and I would like to think things have changed, but I don’t think they have.
“I hope that it allows a woman who was judged, ridiculed, belittled, manipulated and taken advantage of by the legal system, to at least have that shown. I think that the law doesn’t particularly treat women very well at all and this is just one example of how the odds were not stacked in her favor. She was an interesting woman and the more stories about interesting women, the better.”
A Very British Scandal’s three, one-hour episodes are currently streaming on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, and will be available April 22 on Prime Video in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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“Abbott Elementary:” The Right Message at the Right Time
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Quinta Brunson’s workplace mockumentary series “Abbott Elementary,” about the struggles of an under-funded school in the Philadelphia public school system, is a breakout hit with a lot of heart. Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues. Cr: ABC
https://youtu.be/cO-_7oi-61Y
The success of Quinta Brunson’s workplace mockumentary series, Abbott Elementary, seems almost intangible. David Marchese at The New York Times believed, in his recent spotlight on Brunson, that “America was ready for Abbott Elementary,” but despite that nicely phrased headline he still couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of the show’s popularity.
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 1 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard, Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie, and Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 1 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 1 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 1 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 1 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
In fact, he asked her why she thought the show was such a success, being a network comedy on ABC. A loaded question seeing that there’s a perceived disdain for being uber uncool for not being on a streaming service. “The hippest, coolest thing isn’t always for everyone, and that’s OK.” Brunson replied as she built her defense, “Network TV is inherently made for the people. ‘Abbott’ is in this middle space between the two.”
Then she added, with swagger, “The reason for that is that on network TV, for a while, there wasn’t someone like me.”
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie, Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard, Levi Mynatt as Will, and Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
But Brunson isn’t actively being defensive; this is her time, and she’s written a funny comedy with heart about the struggles of an under-funded school in the Philadelphia public school system. It has been a breakout hit on ABC, averaging nearly four million nightly viewers per episode since premiering in December.
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 3 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 3 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 3 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 3 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 3 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Vulture recognized the zeitgeist and climbed on board, noting that this is the “perfect time” for the show. “But what Abbott Elementary does best of all, and at a time when it’s especially vital, is show how passionate many teachers are despite all the struggles and grief that go along with their chosen profession.”
Despite the odds stacked against them, the teachers are determined to help their students succeed in life, and though these dedicated public servants may be outnumbered and underfunded, they love what they do — even if they don’t love the school district’s less-than-stellar attitude toward educating children.
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 4 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 4 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 4 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 4 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 4 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
But there’s a chime here, echoed throughout the western world starting with the tragedy of under-funded inner city schools and finishing with the dashing of children’s hopes and dreams for their future. Armed with Brunson’s wit, a family audience is only too happy to welcome these societal problems into their homes riding on this undercurrent of humor.
Brunson, who is the show’s creator and showrunner, as well as the star, says she conceived of the mockumentary with her mother in mind. The fictional Abbott Elementary is exactly the type of school Brunson’s mother taught in for 40 years.
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill in episode 5 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lela Hoffmeister as Courtney, Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti, and Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 5 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lela Hoffmeister as Courtney in episode 5 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti and Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 5 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 5 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
NPR’s Terry Gross asked her to elaborated on her backstory. “Despite it getting harder, despite teachers not having all the support they need, despite kids growing even more unruly than they’ve been in recent time… she still loved the job,” Brunson says of her mother. “The beauty is someone being so resilient for a job that is so underpaid and so under appreciated because it makes them feel fulfilled.”
But another inspiration for the show was the real Ms. Abbott who taught Brunson when the time came to switch schools. “Brunson’s 6th grade teacher, Ms. Abbott, helped with the transition. Decades later, Brunson decided to name her series after Ms. Abbott.”
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 6 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 6 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill in episode 6 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie and Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 6 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Bruno Amato as Gary and Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 6 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
“I was scared to go into the real world or what I looked at as the real world at the time, and [Ms. Abbott] just took me under her wing,” Brunson says. “She was an incredible teacher who put her all into it, making sure that her students felt special and were ready for the world.”
Prior to Abbott Elementary, Brunson became known for her viral short videos. She worked as a producer and actor for BuzzFeedVideo and was also a cast member on the first season of A Black Lady Sketch Show.
Mitra Jouhari as Sahar and Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 7 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Mitra Jouhari as Sahar and Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 7 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 7 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 7 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 7 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Now as the showrunner, she putting the network’s money where it’s so obviously needed. Recently, the production team and the network made a joint decision that some of the money earmarked for marketing the show should be redirected.
“We chose to put the marketing money toward supplies for teachers,” Brunson says. “It’s about being able to make those kinds of decisions that really excite me, things that can really materially help people.”
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill and Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti, Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard, and Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
William Stanford Davis as Mr. Johnson in episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
ABC was in fact playing the percentages when they had the pilot up on Hulu for a month so people could watch it and then come back with the network when the season started, as Cinemablend noted.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Brunson acknowledged ABC’s thinking, saying, “I hoped that after two seasons, people were going to be like, ‘Hey, anyone ever heard of this show?’ The best recent sitcoms that I can think of, like Schitt’s Creek, didn’t start gaining traction until the second or third season — even The Office and 30 Rock didn’t initially make noise.”
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill, Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard, and Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti in episode 9 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
William Stanford Davis as Mr. Johnson in episode 9 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 9 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 9 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
But Abbott Elementary knows what it’s doing and who its personalities are almost right out of the gate. As of the fourth episode, the characters were already starting to feel as recognizable as family, and the laughs are coming harder and faster.
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 10 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard in episode 10 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 10 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill in episode 10 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 10 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
The episode “New Tech” is a classic, well-executed example of contemporary workplace comedy. The primary story line involves a new type of software the teachers are being forced to use to track student performance and, if the results are strong enough, which will hopefully gain more funding.
During a tutorial in which all the staff are given tablets to use, old-school teacher Barbara is immediately flummoxed but doesn’t want to let on that she can’t grasp new technology, so she pretends she’s mastered it and also totally gets how computers and the internet work. And the comedy ensues.
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill in episode 11 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Jamaal Avery Jr. as Stefon and Nia Chanel in episode 11 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill and Camden Coley as Vick in episode 11 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill in episode 11 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in episode 11 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
It could be called old-school comedy with that fairly misused term “charming,” which is frequently used as derogatory, but Vulture is right to identify Abbott Elementary as an acclamation to the teaching profession with all it’s been through in the last few years.
“If you’re a teacher who’s been working hard for years, and who is under even more stress during this pandemic, you probably just want to feel truly seen. Abbott Elementary definitely sees you.”
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 12 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 12 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 12 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues and Tyler James Williams as Gregory Eddie in episode 12 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Janelle James as Ava Coleman in episode 12 of “Abbott Elementary.” Cr: ABC
Want more? Quinta Brunson chats with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show about the mockumentary style of Abbott Elementary, how it works, why teachers should receive higher pay, and creating a “no asshole” work environment:
PBS discusses how the series is tackling issues of public education and equity through a lens of humor. Watch the full interview with actor Sheryl Lee Ralph in the video below:
https://youtu.be/W9cHf1AUViw
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Showrunner Soo Hugh’s adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” for Apple TV+ masterfully weaves the intricate tapestry of a Korean family through different cities, languages, and generations. Cr: Apple TV+
When author Min Jin Lee researched her book, “Pachinko,” she talked with a number of pachinko parlor owners in Japan about the popular game and the people who play it. She soon realized its worth as a general metaphor for life and a possible title for her 2017 book.
Playing this hybrid of pinball is usually rigged — as shown in the new Apple TV+ series — but still people play. As Lee told PopMatters, she could see in the trope “…that the world is an unfair place, and yet we continue to play, and we continue to show up. We have to.”
Lee Min-Ho as Koh Hansu in episode 1 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jin Ha as Solomon in episode 1 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Anna Sawai as Naomi and Jimmi Simpson as Tom in episode 2 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
She ended up writing the game into her book, which is faithfully recreated for this Apple TV+ series of the same name. But this struggle against all odds theme is only fulfilled by the epic status pachinko is adorned with by the adapter and showrunner Soo Hugh.
The word “saga” hasn’t really been used on television since the days of The Winds of War or Rich Man Poor Man; it’s the visualization of the hefty holiday novel. But Pachinko wears the label well and is a classy and emotional journey through four generations of the same Korean family.
Inji Jeong as Yangin, Yeji Yeon as Bohkee, and Bomin Kim as Donghee in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Melanie McFarland from Salon is enraptured by the story. “Pachinko is a pure and flawless beauty, written by Soo Hugh with enough weight for the story to gently impress itself on the heart and the memory, and portrayed with an uplifting buoyancy that sails the plot from one port to the next as part of a journey swirling the past through the present, showing how each sets the stage for the other,” she says.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Saloni Gajjar from AV Club is on the same page, “Pachinko is an extraordinary drama. Based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel of the same name, it masterfully weaves the intricate tapestry of a Korean family with an expansive scope, spanning different cities, languages, and generations.”
Filmmaker Magazinesets the scene, “In Pachinko, a Korean family struggles for a place in a hostile world. Born into poverty on occupied land, Sunja (played at different ages by Yuna, Minha Kim and Yuh-Jung Youn) emigrates from Busan to Osaka just before World War II.”
The origin story is Sunja’s, and we follow her from the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1915 to her life in Osaka as a grandmother. In such a sweeping tale the production needed two sets of directors and executive producers, Kogonada and Justin Chon, who made four episodes each. Kogonada directed episodes 1, 2, 3, and 7 while Chon directed 4, 5, 6, and 8.
Lee Min-Ho as Koh Hansu in episode 2 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jin Ha as Solomon in episode 2 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Minha Kim as Teen Sunja, Inji Jeong as Yangin, and Steve Sang-Hyun Noh as Isak in episode 3 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Chon effused about working on such a show, “It would be foolish not to fight to be a part of this,” he said. He then continued to explain how different shooting was with the actors. “You have to photograph them differently. You need to light from angles to give the faces more depth. I like to create a bit more contrast to add character. Also, I tend to film more from a three-quarter angle than straight on for Asian faces.”
Kogonada brought with him his independent production discipline. “The biggest difference for us is that as independent filmmakers, we know when we’re shooting a scene exactly how we’re going to cut it. In my case, I do my own editing. This is the first time I’ve handed it over, which was a new experience. I can see real possibilities with that in the future.”
Lee Min-Ho as Koh Hansu and Minha Kim as Teen Sunja in episode 3 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Youn Yuh-Jung as Older Sunja in episode 3 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Anna Sawai as Naomi in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
But Gajjaris right to highlight the craft in Pachinko. “The production design and cinematography are just as key to Pachinko, as the characters travel from boardrooms to narrow cobbled lanes, scenic islands to big cities, and devastation to solace.”
Lee Min-Ho as Koh Hansu in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Shot in Korea and Canada (COVID-19 prevented filming in Japan), the show utilizes the whole spectrum of filmmaking tools, from giant pre-built backlots cleverly adapted from hit Korean dramas to Go-Pros strapped onto actors.
Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, who worked with director Kogonada on episodes 1,2, 3 and 7, cited pillars of Japanese cinema like Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi as influences on the look of the series. “Kogonada is actually very interesting in the sense that he’s very convinced that cinema is as much a contemplation of space as it is about time,” he said. “Our focus was kind of rooting the characters [in Korea] because they would all take off and leave the actual space they’d call home.”
Minha Kim as Teen Sunja in episode 3 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Steve Sang-Hyun Noh as Isak in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Minha Kim as Teen Sunja and Steve Sang-Hyun Noh as Isak in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Showrunner Soo Hugh was at the heart of the aesthetic when she told IndieWire: “When I was writing the season overview, in terms of the tone and style, the one thing that was very important to me is that the past, any of the past, doesn’t feel like masterpiece theater. We [wanted to make sure] that these characters who live in the past don’t feel like they’re at an arm’s throw from us.”
But Hoffmeister and Kogonada were willing to renounce certain routines to underline that aesthetic idea. “We don’t necessarily like to shoot really close close-ups,” explained Hoffmeister. “With Kogonada, a close-up is maybe [what someone else would call] a medium shot — it includes the chest upwards. If you start shooting this way, if you don’t give an audience really tight close-ups immediately, I think you tune an audience into a different awareness.”
Pachinko is full of visuals that are subtly different for avid watchers of drama in 2022, and is much better for it. The three-language approach isn’t the problem you might think it would be and the jumping around the century is unhindered by any color change to remind you of where you are.
However, Steve Greene from IndieWire sees such paraphernalia as part of the timeless, global approach, “Goodbyes and ultimatums are bathed in deep reds and blues, while composer Nico Muhly builds at least one main melodic idea out of a single, sparsely repeated note.”
Jin Ha as Solomon in episode 4 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
But he concludes his review with the eternal immigrant paradox: “One of the motivating drives behind Pachinko is the question of identity, not just in the one informed by birthplace or lineage, but dealing with the pressures of generations and to what extent someone can forge their own path.”
Want more? Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, BSC shares with the Go Creative Show how he created one cohesive look to represent multiple decades in Japan and Korea. He also discusses what Pachinko accomplishes as a story, how to effectively use space in cinematography, when to say no to a project, the logistics of using a camera crane on the water, and more:
Watch Hoffmeister delve further into the incredible look he created for Pachinko, his collaboration on the project with fellow DP Ante Cheng, and more for FilmmakerU:
Minha Kim as Teen Sunja in episode 2 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Yuna as Young Sunja in episode 1 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jin Ha as Solomon in episode 1 of “Pachinko.” Cr: Apple TV+
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“Navalny:” When Your Documentary Ends Up as a Spy Thriller
Following Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in his quest to identify the men who poisoned him in August 2020, director Daniel Rohr’s “Nalvany” won both the US Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival for. Cr: Sundance Institute
‟Navalny” won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards and is currently streaming on HBO Max.
https://youtu.be/I8utTvWW6B0
The Sundance film festival doesn’t need much to have their films enter competition. The name of the film is usually a given. But in 2022’s US Documentary section, had a mysterious last-minute competitor entered under the codename of ‟Untitled LP9.” It was, in fact, ‟Navalny,” still steeped in secrecy even up to the point that director Daniel Roher aired his pre-recorded introduction.
In a statement on the Sundance blog, festival director Tabitha Jackson addressed the level of secrecy over ‟Navalny:” “We have known about this film for months and we haven’t said anything about it to allow the team the time to work on it the way they needed to.”
The documentary ostensibly follows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in his quest to identify the men who poisoned him in August 2020. ‟Navalny” is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that is also a study of Navalny the man — a portrait of a leader intent on reform who will not be cowed by anything, including his own poisoning.
From “Navlany”
The post-premiere Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival released the tension that had built up from the day Navalny had consented to making the film back in 2020. Asked why they had used such a peculiar codename, one of the producer answered with laughter, “The FSB (Russia’s secret service) had a code name for [Konstantin] Kudryavtsev — ‘Love Potion No. 9’ — so that became our fake title.”
Kudryavtsev had played an unwitting part in ‟Navalny.” He was the target of a sting operation between CNN, Navalny and the data investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat. Amazingly, Navalny himself had called Kudryavtsev pretending to be a Kremlin higher-up wanting to know why the assassination didn’t go as planned.
Variety explains what happened in the phone call, quoting Bulgarian journalist hacker Christo Grozev. “Amazingly, one of the men — Konstantin Kudryavstev, a chemist who helped to orchestrate the operation — is fooled by Navalny’s ruse and admits, right over the phone (and on camera), to all of it. (“We did it just as planned, the way we rehearsed it many times. But in our profession, as you know, there are lots of unknowns and nuances.”)
“He’s basically confessing to state-sanctioned murder — and in doing so, he’s incriminating his boss, Vladimir Putin. One of Navalny’s associates claps her hand over her mouth in disbelief.”
Alexi Navalny as himself in “Navalny” Cr: Dogwoof Films
It was Grozev who had initially contacted Navalny with the idea of the documentary while he was still recuperating in Germany from the poisoning. Grozev had done his digging, as The Guardian described, “After Navalny’s poisoning, Grozev began looking for clues about who might have been behind the hit.
“Having bought telephone and flight records on the Russian dark web, he found a group of eight men from the FSB security services who appeared to have been following Navalny on trips across Russia for several years.”
Alexi Navalny as himself in “Navalny” Cr: Dogwoof Films
Grozev contacted Navalny and journeyed to Germany to meet with him and share the information he had found. Director Roher came with him and kept filming. It turned out Navalny and his team had already been thinking about making a film, and a collaboration began.
Roher tells the story of when he first met Navalny, “Christo and I were crossing the Austria-Germany border and we drove to this cinematic sleepy town called St. Blasien in the Black Forest and I met Alexei. From the moment we met, I felt Alexei’s presence and energy in a very real way. He was disarming, his smile was warm, he was charming.
“He found us compelling enough to say, ‘Okay let’s start.’ Alexei — who’s a mastermind of media strategy and strategist — understood that if the story was this unfolding murder mystery, then we had to start right away.”
Over the next three-and-a-half months this film evolved into a very intimate portrait of one man, his family, his staff, and what they were willing to sacrifice for the values they believe in. All of the filming was done in secret, with a small crew and limited resources.
“It wasn’t until late December that we finally were able to re-emerge and strategize before Alexei’s return in January 2021.”
Navalny went back to Russia in January 2021 and, on the basis of trumped-up corruption charges, was immediately apprehended and thrown in jail, where he now faces a potential 20-year sentence.
Alexi Navalny as himself in “Navalny” Cr: Dogwoof Films
Concluding clips of Navalny in handcuffs and behind bars, flashing peace signs to supporters, loved ones and cameras, imply that he hasn’t given up the fight for freedom, human rights, and justice in his homeland.
The Daily Beast calls the documentary “a thrilling nonfiction ride” and its depiction of Putin as a “cruel autocrat who’s willing to achieve his ends by any merciless means necessary.”
Director Daniel Roher and Dasha Navalny during the Q&A following the virtual premiere of documentary feature “Navalny.” Cr: Sundance Institute
The Guardian’s review realizes that the documentary had successfully hit its target. “’Navalny,’ a 98-minute documentary from Canadian director Daniel Roher, details in cogent, stressful, riveting fashion just how scared the Kremlin is of Navalny, arguably the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin’s power at home,” their conclusion is one of a story straight from the movies.
“Doughy, dopey agents who followed Navalny for three years and poisoned him on a filming trip to Siberia with the nerve agent novichok, a poison which essentially shuts down the body and then dissipates, making death appear to be from natural causes.”
Director Daniel Roher, Dasha Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, Christo Grozev, producers Diane Becker, Shane Boris, Melanie Miller, and Odessa Rae, director of photography Niki Waltl, and editors Langdon Page, Maya Daisy Hawke, and Edmund Stenson during the Q&A session following the virtual premiere of “Navalny.” Cr: Sundance Institute
But for Navalny, was it all worth it as he now sits in a Moscow prison. Roher is not hopeful, “I think he’s going to be in prison for a very long time. Whether it’s five years or 10 or 20 I’m not sure.
“But I don’t think he gets out until Putin is forced out and Putin is in fine shape. There’s no incentive for them to release him. He mortally offended them several times and then he went back.”
Additional Recognition
In addition to its 2022 Sundance win, ‟Navalny” scored the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards Show, which was also the first win for production company CNN Films, according to ABC7News.com.
Learn about the making of other best documentary nominees on NAB Amplify:
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” shows how Nan Goldin’s life and work intersect with her activism.
September 1, 2022
Posted
April 11, 2022
How the “Winning Time” Team Got Those Gorgeous ‘70s and ‘80s Visual Vibes
Produced and directed by Adam McKay, HBO’s new docudrama “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” shows how the Lakers changed the way basketball is played. Cr: Warner Media
https://youtu.be/WqbWwKx1nBU
The makers of HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty employed old- and new-school techniques to help transport viewers to the 1970s and ‘80s. The show, from director/producer Adam McKay, stars John C. Reilly as LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss and takes a dramatic, and sometimes comedic, look at the events leading up to the team’s transformation from an also-ran organization to the dynasty it became in the time of superstar lineup including Magic Johnson (Quincy Isiah) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes).
Cinematographers Todd Banhazl and Mihai Malaimare Jr. shot primarily on 35mm film but also utilized 16mm and 8mm and even vintage 1970s-era video cameras to produce the series’ unique look. Senior colorist Walter Volpatto of Company 3 Hollywood used Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 17 to fine-tune the show’s look, often retaining, and even enhancing, artifacts of the older imaging technology.
Company 3 Hollywood senior colorist Walter Volpatto employed Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 17
to fine-tune the look of HBO’s drama series, “Winning Time,” often retaining and even enhancing
artifacts of older imaging technologies. Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Quincy Isaiah as
Magic Johnson. Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
“The idea was to capture not just the clothes and design of the period,” says Volpatto, who had previously worked with Banhazl on the intense feature Hustlers, “but also the overall look of the time. The discussion was, ‘Let’s pretend that this footage was shot back in the day sort of like a documentary and we found it now, years later, a little bit faded, a little beat up.’ So we did a whole lot of processing [in the grade] to bring everything back in time.
“If you think about stock footage,” he adds, “sometimes it was shot with film and then transferred to tape and the tape was probably compressed. So we needed to reverse-engineer all of this, take away the modernity of it.”
The concept, as developed for the pilot by Banhazl and McKay, along with writers Max Borenstein and Rodney Barnes, was to make the show seem to have been shot primarily in 16mm, which was assembled along with footage from all the formats mentioned above, frequently mixed together even within individual scenes. The filmmakers shot most of the dramatic action with either multiple formats concurrently or sometimes shooting takes for 35mm and then bringing in different cameras — 16mm or 8mm or NTSC video — for additional coverage.
“We knew,” says Banhazl, “that the show was going to mix our footage with period archival and photos, real basketball footage, famous news conference, and also bits of American pop culture and commercials from the time. In that way the style could feel like a collage — an American culture mixtape.”
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss and Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss and Sally Fiend as Jessie Buss in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
The cinematographers shot with period lenses specifically because those optics tend to introduce a distinctive kind of flare that would have been far less pronounced with contemporary glass containing more sophisticated coatings. Lighting was handled in a style more suggestive of documentary work than of polished narrative films of the time, with the subjects generally well-lit but with that fall-off into a kind reddish milkiness of underexposed film. While Volpatto might instinctively want to dial in more contrast to such images to make them look “polished,” he knew he needed to hold back, even enhance those attributes to realize the filmmakers’ vision for the piece.
Picture editors were not too concerned with matching action; jump cuts were part of the aesthetic. Likewise, Volpatto didn’t focus on the shot matching that is so often a key function of the colorist, instead allowing, or again enhancing, the qualities that make the photographic formats look different from one another. Unless a cut was so jarring as to draw attention away from the story, the different looks were part of the aesthetic. The colorist summarizes his thinking on this, paraphrasing the popular ad campaign, “The idea was to have just the right amount of wrong.”
The bulk of the show was actually shot in 35mm film [Kodak Vision 3: 500T, 50D 250D], rather than the 16mm reversal which they emulated, primarily to ensure there was enough resolution to be able to manipulate the imagery in post, particularly for green screen work that would ultimately be comped with the large number of VFX shots which would recreate long-gone elements of Los Angeles.
Also, working with scans of 35mm neg, Volpatto explains, offered significantly more control over those artifacts — scratches, dirt, camera weave — that are naturally more apparent blown up from the smaller-gauge stock.
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Tamera Tomakili as Cookie Keely in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Rob Morgan as Earvin Johnson Sr. in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Shaylaren Hilton as Maria, John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, and Stephen Adly Guirgis as Frank Mariani in season 1 episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
To make the 35mm-originated material look more like imagery that started on 16mm film and was subsequently telecined and left to sit around for years, Volpatto added visible perforations to many of the shots, as well as flicker effects and enhanced digital grain.
“The Kodak stocks have gotten better over the years,” Volpatto points out. “We wanted something not quite as good. Lenses, especially for documentary, weren’t that great then. So we looked into ways to mimic all that in an elegant way — not necessarily to match the look perfectly, but to add the look of the older stocks, the smaller film, the older lenses, and all of that.”
Volpatto graded through a film emulation LUT to constrain color and contrast to attributes available at the time. “It was difficult to find a true emulation from the period,” the colorist recalls, “so we started with a more modern one and then we heavily changed it to make the images look more like they were shot in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”
The DPs had actively worked to capture grain in the film images through underexposure/push processing and Volpatto subsequently utilized his arsenal of digital techniques to capture some of that actual grain from scanned portions of 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm film and then layer it in using Resolve to finetune the behavior of the added grain to make it respond to light and dark regions of the frame in a natural-feeling way.
Jason Clarke as Jerry West and Brett Cullen as Bill Sharman in season 1 episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson, LisaGay Hamilton as Christine Johnson, and Rob Morgan as Earvin Johnson Sr. in season 1 episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Rory Cochrane as Jerry Tarkanian in season 1 episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
The colorist worked with Banhazl early on to introduce “camera weave” into the 35mm-shot material. “We looked at a test of 35mm and 16mm [images] shot with a tripod,” Volpatto recalls. “Obviously, the 16mm shots had more weave. I used a nice resolve plug-in called Camera Shake and modify the intended use of it to introduce weave into the 35mm material to make it look more like 16.”
Some portions of the show were captured on actual 16mm film [Kodak Double X and Tri-X, along with some Vison 3 negative]. “When you see the photographic choreography of the players playing basketball,” Volpatto explains, “there was a camera operator on rollerblades chasing [the action] with an old 16-millimeter [ARRI 416] camera and vintage [Zeiss Ultra Speed] lenses. The shots are absolutely amazing!”
Sheaun McKinney as Zastro and Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in season 1 episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Jason Clarke as Jerry West and John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss in season 1 episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Jason Segel as Paul Westhead, John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, and Tracy Letts as Jack McKinney in season 1 episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
There is also a significant amount of material throughout the series that was shot in Super-8, which was processed and scanned at Burbank, CA-based PRO8MM.
To reproduce the look of videography at the time, the production found and revived some vintage Ikegami ITC-730A and HL-79 tube-based video cameras. “They were literally either in a museum or sitting in an old stockpile,” Volpatto notes. “They put together an array of cameras before they started shooting. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t, and some of them were valuable for spare parts,” Volpatto recalls.
Adrien Brody as Pat Riley and Spencer Garrett as Chick Hearn in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Carina Conti as Paula Adbul in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Carina Conti as Paula Adbul in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
“We used the video material both to recreate basketball on TV and for also for subjective emotional moments,” Banhazl adds. The cameras pulled the NTSC signal and recorded it digitally to pix 240 recorders. In the grade, Volpatto says, “We would further process it to enhance the look and feel of the old NTSC video recordings.”
“Sometimes we wanted the Ikegami video footage to feel like cheesy TV from the time, and sometimes we wanted the interlaced low-resolution aesthetic to strip down the characters and see them in a more vulnerable human way.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Some of what the production did to imbue the archival look was as simple as asking the film lab, FotoKem, not to pre-clean the negative before scanning and not to dust bust afterwards. It was also very important to coordinate with the dailies colorist — also at Company 3 — so that when he received the film scans he understood that what looked like mistakes from the lab were actually a deliberate part of the process, and that he should not clean things up or fight the look to make the images seem “better.”
“The instinct of a dailies colorist is to make everything look balanced and neutral,” says Volpatto. “But that is not the look we were all after. There are a lot of biases, especially in the blacks, and it was important that everyone who saw the dailies was able to get some kind of an actual representation of where we’d be going with the look in final color.”
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in season 1 episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Spencer Garrett as Chick Hearn, Adrien Brody as Pat Riley, Brett Cullen as Bill Sharman, John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, and Jason Clarke as Jerry West in season 1 episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Jason Segel as Paul Westhead and Tracy Letts as Jack McKinney in season 1 episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Toward that end, the DPs carried a RED Komodo during the shoot with some of the digital film look applied as a LUT that Volpatto had created specifically for the Komodo and matched as much as possible to the intended final look.
“When you are doing something where there is no true white point in the image and the blacks are super dirty and there is green or magenta in the skin tone,” Banhazl explains, “there are just so many things that could be considered ‘wrong’ — things a dailies colorist might want to ‘fix.’ The Komodo was kind of like our digital ‘Polaroid.’ I could send stills from that camera to the dailies department. The dailies colorist could focus on matching the skin tones to the stills and let the rest of the images fall where they fall.”
Tracy Letts as Jack McKinney in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Hadley Robinson as Jeanie Buss and Gaby Hoffmann as Claire Rothman in season 1 episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Winning Time is a special series for the cinematographers and Volpatto. “It was a blast,” Banhazl enthuses. “It was like playing jazz with a group of brilliant talented artists.”
“This was such fun show to work on,” adds Volpatto. “We were so free. We didn’t have to make everything ‘perfect.’ It’s supposed to have a bit of a grungy style and it’s been very rewarding to be a part of creating that look.”
DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon and Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in season 1 episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in season 1 episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Sarah Ramos as Cheryl Pistono in season 1 episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Stephen Adly Guirgis as Frank Mariani, John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, Brett Cullen as Bill Sharman, and Jason Clarke as Jerry West in season 1 episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warrick Page/Warner Media
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
From producer Ryann Fraser and director Chris Smith, “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” explores the whys and wherefores of a stranger-than-fiction story about Manhattan’s “hottest vegan,” Sarma Melngailis. Cr: Netflix
The truly bonkers tale of high-end restaurateur Sarma Melngailis’ downfall is the subject of Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives, a four-part Netflix docuseries from Chris Smith, the director behind such schadenfreude-driven nonfiction hits as Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
On the face of it another in the line of true crime cons such as Inventing Anna, Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King, and Tinder Swindler, the story is so bizarre that it feels almost made for Netflix.
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Allen Salkin in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
To recap: Manhattan’s “hottest vegan” takes off with her husband, Anthony Strangis, and a huge pile of money stolen from her employees, who are left empty-handed. She’s only taken down when she orders, of all things, a Domino’s pizza to the Tennessee hotel room where they’ve been hiding out.
Producer Ryann Fraser and director Smith say they didn’t realize what had they had until they interviewed Melngailis (who pleaded guilty to grand larceny, tax fraud and conspiring to defraud in 2019 and spent four months in prison) over eight hours.
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
“I don’t think I even met Sarma until we were sitting across from each other in the interview,” Smith told Steve Greene at IndieWire. “That was the main interview that you see in the series. I try not to pre-interview people. When people do an interview, and they’re telling you something for the first time, I feel like that’s something that can’t be recaptured.”
Jeffrey Chodorow in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Anthony Strangis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
“Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
This confirmed to the filmmakers some of the more salacious headlines from previous print articles: namely about the relationship between Melngailis and Strangis, a Jonestown-esque cult leader who, it is implied, as good as brainwashed her into stealing the money on the promise, incredibly, that he was an immortal being who could bestow the gift of eternal life on both Melngailis and her pet dog.
Though Strangis never appears on camera, his words and actions are represented throughout Bad Vegan. Melngailis’ recorded phone calls — including one on camera that opens the series — give a literal voice to his behavior over the course of his time around Melngailis and her various business ventures.
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“He is either delusional or the world’s biggest liar, or both,” Alissa Wilkinson writes at Vox.
“My goal with projects is never to try to tell the audience what to think,” Smith said to Addie Morfoot in an interview for Variety. “This project is very much like a Rorschach test. I feel like different people see it in different ways and they come away with different conclusions.”
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
It is this ambivalence about the central characters and their true motivations that make this series stand out from other scammer stories.
“After four hours of the show — listening to Melngailis explain her story, seemingly as a reliable narrator — the series takes a turn, and spends its last 10 minutes casting doubt on the whole thing,” Wilkinson recounts. “Is the tale we were just told the full truth? Or have we, too, been a little bit scammed?”
“Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Nikki King Bennett in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Nikki King Bennett in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Andrew Elliott in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Maiquen Saez-Vega in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
The wave of stories like these — WeCrashed, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, The Dropout and others — share a very familiar story, “often looking for the reasons the fraud or con or cult succeeded in the first place. People wanted to belong. They were suckered by privilege. They wanted money. They want independence or direction or power.”
Wilkinson goes further in attempting to explain why audiences are flocking to them too. It’s surely more than the willingness to watch other human beings in a slow-motion car wreck and the selfish delight we get in a “there but for the grace of God, go I” kind of way.
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Wilkinson concludes that the series is less interested in the schadenfreude and more fascinated by the whys. Why would someone accomplished, beautiful, and successful like Melngailis be taken in by such a seemingly obvious grifter? Why, when the bloom had rubbed off, would she stay with this abusive man? What does it mean that she’s willing to talk with a documentarian working for Netflix about it now?
Nick Ross in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Judy Berman at Time agrees that there’s something more profound going on behind the clickbait title, although Bad Vegan only begins to say so.
“Melngailis’ ordeal, if you choose to believe her version of the events, speaks to the whole constellation of bizarre, fact-free ideologies currently flooding the public square. Anti-vax. QAnon. Pizzagate. Election fraud. A classic: the Illuminati.”
Her belief in alternative facts, misinformation and conspiracy theories, are perhaps to her mind a shield from unpopular reality.
“The same brand of anti-establishment skepticism that draws a person like Melngailis to wellness culture can also leave them vulnerable to false gurus and dangerously wacky ideas.”
Leon in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
For instance, she has apparently paid back the $63,000 owed to former employers from her fee for appearing in the documentary, and Salkin verified this.
Another point Melngailis wants to make: “The impression in the doc is I intentionally married Anthony so he could transfer me money. That is completely not the case. At some point, Anthony did some of his mindfuckery and got me to marry him.”
She also still has Leon, the rescue dog who Strangis promised immortality. According to Salkin, “Melngailis has now completely accepted that neither Leon nor she will be made immortal by Strangis or anyone else — but it would be nice if he kept going as long as possible. She’s doing what she can.”
Nazim Seliakhov in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Leon and Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Nazim Seliakhov in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
“Based on his estimated birthday, he just turned 12, which usually surprises people because he can act much younger,” she says. “I’ve posted in the past details about what I feed him on his/my Instagram.”
She says she not going to start over in the restaurant business nor ask anyone for money ever again. “I need to crawl out from under debt. Some days I’m inspired and fired up to get shit done. Other days I’m exhausted and feel unable to handle anything. So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just hide away with Leon and write books. Or fly to the borders of Ukraine and help make Molotov cocktails. Something useful.”
Sarma Melngailis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Sheila Tendy in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
Stacy Strangis in “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” Cr: Netflix
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Once Upon a Time in Encino: Making “Licorice Pizza”
From director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Inherent Vice and now Licorice Pizza, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson loves the San Fernando Valley. He also loves the 1970s — when Boogie Nights, Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza are set. That’s natural, since he grew up there at that time, but there was a moment where he asked himself, “Are you really going to make another film in Los Angeles in the seventies again?”
“Then you ignore that voice, and you swat it away like a fly,” he told Variety. “Comfort. Joy. I like the way [the Valley] looks. I like the way it tastes and smells. I don’t know beyond I love it.”
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine and Alana Haim as Alana Kane in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
His latest film is a comic coming-of-age love story starring relatively unknown actors Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman; this is the film debut for the co-stars. It’s set during 1973 amid great political change, shifts in popular culture, and a gas crisis, and has a soundtrack featuring songs by David Bowie, The Doors, Paul McCartney and Wings, Sonny & Cher, Chuck Berry, Blood Sweat and Tears, and others.
It’s a dramatic change of pace from much of Anderson’s other work, such as the avarice and paranoia depicted in There Will Be Blood and The Master, or the Gothic romance at the center of Phantom Thread.
“This story just emerged,” says Anderson. “I love the way it unfolds. You meet these two people. You have them fall in love and get to see their relationship blossom, and there are various episodes that challenge them in different ways. I didn’t overdesign it. I just got lucky.”
Vanity Fair’s Yohana Desta describes the film as “an endearing, risqué tale about Gary, a 15-year-old boy (Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana, a 25-year-old woman (Haim) who form an immediate, curious bond that borders on an inappropriate romance.
“Gary’s charm and hustle, based on the real-life adventures of producer Gary Goetzman, a former child actor, is a fine match for Alana’s wry tongue and a lifestyle so aimless that she hangs out with teenage boys all the time. The movie is jovial and sun-drenched, so much so that Anderson didn’t want to release it in the dead of winter.”
Anderson tells Desta the role plays to a lot of Hoffman’s strengths. “Cooper’s very social, he’s very charming, he’s very easy,” he says. “But there’s a certain moment where it really stops. What’s interesting is when kids have one foot in adulthood and another foot in adolescence. They’re so fucking vulnerable. They’re trying all these coats on for size to see what the real world is like, and that’s the character that he plays. It was very hard to find another actor who was maybe a child actor who had some experience who wasn’t anything but just precocious and irritating. Maybe many of them have been trained by their parents to try to get a role on a television show, or to do sitcom acting, which is much more theatrical — and which has a place, but it would not have fit right in this story.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Girl Power
Casting Haim, who Anderson has directed in several music videos with her sisters Danielle and Este as the rock band Haim, “was no battle,” Anderson tells Kyle Buchanan in The New York Times.
“I’ve seen Alana’s ferociousness. She may look like a Jewish girl from the Valley, but she’s sort of a ‘30s throwback, fast-talking, very funny, very sharp. You do not want to challenge her in a fight with words, because she will win,” he said.
“MGM trusted my track record,” adds Anderson. “I wouldn’t want to think about having to convince another actress to not wear makeup and drop that level of vanity that seems to surround a lot of young actresses. It takes somebody with some guts to say, “It’s impossible to justify wearing makeup in the San Fernando Valley in 1973, therefore I won’t do it.” It sounds like not that big a deal, but it’s a big deal for a lot of people.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Punchy, ballsy, broad-shouldered despite her slightness, Haim seems a fitting woman to be Anderson’s first female lead, says Catherine Shoard in The Guardian’s interview with Haim and Anderson. “What is strange is that Anderson himself, for a father of four who has specialized in movies about masculinity, seems so feminine,” she adds. “Yet his film is less simple when it comes to gender. The three sisters, for instance, are shown as fractious, needling, difficult. The boys, meanwhile — Gary, his nine-year-old brother, and the troupe of friends they hang out with — are collaborative, loving and can-do. Is that generally the case?” she asks.
“Sometimes you love each other,” Haim replies. “Sometimes you don’t. I grew up in a household with three girls sharing one bathroom.”
In the film, all three are still living with their parents, “well past when they should be,” says Anderson (who has three sisters around his age, and four older brothers). “The boys are running free, free of supervision to roam the streets.”
“So perhaps it’s less about a gender divide than two types of parenting: one top-heavy, the other over-light (Gary’s father is unseen, his mother overworked and often absent). It’s not hard to decipher which product of these approaches is presented as better-adjusted,” observes Shoard.
Later Shoard reveals that Anderson and Haim are doing all the press for the film, with Hoffman “carefully protected.”
“Haim — once his babysitter — proves as tough a bodyguard as her boss,” she notes.
“Me and Cooper are two peas in a pod,” Haim warns with a smile. “Us against the world. With Paul.”
“Haim likes the idea that she is a beast to be unleashed,” Shoard adds.
“I’m very territorial when it comes to the people that I love,” Haim says. “I love very hard and if you’re in my family, I will do anything to protect you. Cooper is basically my family now. I would do anything for him. I can be very sweet, but you don’t want to mess with anyone that I love.”
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Deadline’s Pete Hammond says the film is “often raucously funny,” adding that Anderson “has served up a slice of his own view of a cockeyed relationship between two young people — one with the boy quite a bit younger than the girl — and their series of episodic adventures navigating of the terrain of the San Fernando Valley, a favorite haunt of Anderson who grew up there himself.”
The film has not been without some criticism, however. “The [blossoming friendship] grows into something more, which has given some critics pause,” writes Zack Sharf in IndieWire. “Anderson told The Times there’s nothing creepy at play in his film.”
“There’s no line that’s crossed, and there’s nothing but the right intentions,” the director said. “It would surprise me if there was some kind of kerfuffle about it, because there’s not that much there. That’s not the story that we made, in any kind of way. There isn’t a provocative bone in this film’s body.”
Alana Haim and Sean Penn on the set of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
It is, indeed, Anderson’s happiest creation to date, says influential critic Anthony Lane at The New Yorker, adding “blithe, easy-breathing, and expansive. The odd thing is that, in terms of space and time, it’s what Bowie would have called a god-awful small affair. Aside from a short trip to New York, it clings to the San Fernando Valley, and we’re firmly stuck in the early nineteen-seventies.”
Lane adds, “There isn’t much of a plot to this movie. Rather, it’s shaggy with happenings — with the weird, one-off events that tend to crop up during adolescence, and to grow funnier, and taller, in the telling.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
California Dreaming
“Once upon a time in Encino…” intones David Fear in Rolling Stone. “Licorice Pizza is a lot of things, from cockeyed rom-com to dual coming-of-age tale, from affectionate ode to American can-do hucksterism to the sort of ramblin’, amblin’ hang-out movie that you wish you could lounge about in for days,” he adds. “But it’s also very much a memory piece, and even though Anderson was only three years old when this boy-meets-girl story takes place, you can tell that he’s returning to a period that he very much wants to trap in amber. Proust had his madeleines and Sunday mornings at Combray. PTA has his movie cameras, production designers, and the Tail O’ the Cock restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. The film is such an intimate, personal look back that you almost feel like you’re flipping through someone’s old scrapbook.”
According to LA Weekly’s Lina Lecaro, sets, costumes and props can recreate an era (and depending on the wardrobe department, some do it better than others) but it’s the story and the director’s approach to telling it that make or break it.
“Anderson has become known for making it more than once, conjuring the past in a dynamic and immersive way,” she says. “In particular his mastery of atmosphere no matter the era, from the smoky casinos of his debut Hard Eight, to the coked-out pool parties in Boogie Nights to the rainy car rides of SoCal in Magnolia, stands out and puts him on the shortlist beside contemporaries (Quentin Tarantino, Cameron Crowe) as well as his own influencers (Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme) in terms of transportive filmmakers.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
This is a less-complicated world, Eve Barlow writes in Variety. “A slower world, a more meaningful world, a world in which you had to remember someone’s phone number if you wanted to get to know them, a world in which cigarettes were still considered a rite of passage and sushi was still new, a world in which airplanes were an exotic experience, a world in which a 15- year-old boy could order ‘two Cokes’ in order to seem grown-up to a girl 10 years his senior.
“In Licorice Pizza, Anderson finds hope in the Valley again,” Barlow continues. “Gone are the plagued, alienated, lonely characters; instead [we have] a group of restless young things with schemes and plans to procrastinate from their most questionable, most illogical, yet most victorious feelings for one another.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane, Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine, and Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
According to NPR’s Justin Chang, the movie unfolds like a jumbled ‘70s flashback, one that Anderson seems to have scrapped together by rummaging through cherished old stories and songs. “We hear some of them on the gloriously overstuffed soundtrack: Nina Simone, Sonny & Cher, The Doors and others. The movie is funny, shaggy and altogether wonderful,” says Chang. “That said, it’s an Anderson movie through and through. It might be sunnier and more laid-back than his earlier dramas like There Will Be Blood and The Master, but it’s no less rich in historical detail. One of the movie’s funniest set-pieces, an action scene involving a runaway truck, takes place during the gas shortages that would cause car lines to stretch on for miles.”
The intriguing title refers to a record store from Anderson’s youth, as he told Variety:
“After many months of banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what to name this film, I concluded that these two words shoved together reminded me the most of my childhood. Growing up, there was a record-store chain in Southern California called Licorice Pizza. It seemed like a catch-all for the feeling of the film. I suppose if you have no reference to the store, it’s two great words that go well together and maybe capture a mood. Maybe it just looks good on a poster?”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Sean Penn as Jack Holden in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Anderson used 1970s-style filmmaking processes for the visuals including shooting on 35mm film with vintage glass. The film itself has a limited theatrical release in 70mm. Cinematographer Michael Bauman (who shared lensing duties with Anderson) told Deadline, “Most of the time you’re using more modern glass, you get a sharper image. That was the exact opposite of what we’re doing here. We had a set of lenses Gordon Willis used from the ‘70s. The C Series is a very old series of lenses too. It adds that texture in the image.”
Dailies were screened, well, every day, as filmmakers would have done to review footage in the ‘70s, before video playback became widespread.
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Sean Penn as Jack Holden in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Editor Andy Jurgenson goes into greater detail with Steve Hullfish for Frame.io’s Art of the Cut, including how Anderson and his team do everything on film.
“We’re still cutting digitally obviously, but during the shoot, we’re watching film dailies, so we do have to prep that. Then, once we get to a certain point, we do conform workprint. And when we lock, we make lists and cut negative for the photochemical version of the movie,” says Jurgenson.
“This film was all shot in LA, which was great because we could gather together at the beginning or the end of the shoot day in our space, have a drink, and just watch dailies from the day before,” he adds. “Usually, we get the film first even before we’re getting it digitally because that’s just the way that everything gets processed with the scanning. The pipeline is so unique. So, the first time we’re seeing it is on print. We can just judge so many things when watching it big on film. Not only the performance, but the lighting, and the lenses and focus.
“I feel pretty lucky to be straddling these two ways of filmmaking. It’s so fun. Yes, it can be annoying at times because there are all these extra elements that we have to make, but it’s also so special being in this old photochemical style of filmmaking,” he continues. “Obviously, I do other movies too, so it’s interesting how Paul’s process has influenced how I approach those projects. It’s a unique experience.”
“We don’t set the characters up or provide any establishing shots of the school,” Jurgensen tells IBC365. “We just launch straight into the movie. Paul and I were keen to keep the momentum going throughout, to propel you through all these stories and retain that youthful quality.
“Perhaps the toughest scene to crack was set in the [oak-paneled bar-restaurant] ‘Tail of the Cock’ when Alana is with Jack Holden (Penn). Gary and his friends enter the scene and we got bogged down in early assemblies with setting up Jack as being drunk and then Gary trying to catch Alana’s eye, meanwhile Tom Waits is talking to the whole bar. We just had to continually pair it down so it worked.”
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine and Alana Haim as Alana Kane in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
The opening sequence wasn’t quite as effortless as it appears either.
“As you can tell from his other films, Paul doesn’t like a lot of heavy cutting. He wants to keep the performances intact so he’d try to find two or three perfect takes he can pull from. This scene was shot over two days and we’d initially assembled it from more of a front-on angle which just didn’t feel right. We found a take of Alana and stayed on her facial expressions for a minute, maybe more, before switching to Gary and that just clicked.”
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
IndieWire‘s review described the film’s camerawork as “an extension of the characters in front of it and the movie they’re pin-balling across. It’s not always sure where it’s going, but it’s hellbent on getting there without stopping, and enraptured by what it might find along the way.”
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine and Alana Haim as Alana Kane in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Licorice Pizza was also filmed on location in order to lend the film a more freewheeling naturalism. “We were scouting to find intersections, big streets where we did full takeovers and designs of 10 storefronts,” says production designer Florencia Martin. “It was just taking away and really committing to de-modernizing the Valley and bringing it back to the ‘70s.”
The touchstones for the film’s look and feel are George Lucas’ 1973 American Graffiti and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a 1982 Brat Pack movie starring Sean Penn, who also appears in Licorice Pizza.
Those choices are not super surprising, Aurora Amidon writes in Paste, “but he did throw in a bit of a curveball when asked what his favorite movies of 2021 were.”
“[Anderson] cited Shang-Chi as a theater-favorite, while also admitting that he does, indeed, live in a Marvel household. He also sang the praises of Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Titane, the Cannes-winner our critic describes as “108 bloody minutes of bodily mutilation and perversion.”
Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Back to those influences on the film in hand though, and as Andersonwas one of the two cinematographers on Licorice Pizza, Eric Kohn at IndieWire asked him how tried to import the visual style of those earlier “Valley” movies.
“Photographically, I love, love, love American Graffiti. I love what happened in that time when filmmakers were doing things in [Cinemascope] but they clearly had no money for lighting,” Anderson explains. “You hear these famous stories of Haskell Wexler coming in to help with the photography of the film. If you see any behind-the-scenes photographs, the absolute minimum they were working with to make these beautiful images still kind of amazes me. Believe me, I’ve tried to say, ‘What if we worked with two lights to get American Graffiti light?’ And I can’t do it. It’s one of those magical things that Haskell Wexler figured out. I just love it photographically. Sound design, too. It’s never not worth repeating how beautiful the sound design is. Very unique.”
Director Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
Interviewing Michael Bauman, who, while a longtime collaborator with Anderson, didn’t have a single feature DP credit to his name before Licorice Pizza,Luke Hicks on The Film Stage reveals that the duo did a series of screen tests over the course of year. “It was really [Anderson] testing to make sure Alana and Cooper would work out,” Bauman tells Hicks. “We’d roll into a test. They’d be doing dialogue scenes. And it was [Anderson] also working the dialogue out, what’s the dynamic like, all this kind of stuff — putting some meat to the bones.”
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Later Bauman reveals how they approached the visual aesthetic of the film.
“With Paul what’s great is he’s got this whole screening room set up at his house,” says Bauman. “So he can screen 35mm or 70mm at his home. And he knows all the studios and who controls their film libraries.
“So when we did this movie, [Anderson] was like, “We gotta watch American Graffiti,” adds Bauman. “So we watched the damn thing like three times. And that was really the strongest visual reference. Then, we looked at Manhattan — you know, the Woody Allen movie — because there’s a lot of interesting walk and talk in that particular production. At the beginning of the movie, where he’s asking for her number and he messes it up a few times and they’re just walking… you know, Manhattan is considered an amazing work of black and white cinematography, and it is! But what we were looking at is these walk and talks and how [cinematographer] Gordon Willis handled them. He would just put a light over camera, and he had all sorts of stuff going on in the background, and he just went with that. So we duplicated that. Normally on a movie now, you’d light up all the backgrounds and do all this crazy shit. We didn’t do any of that. We were like, “Let’s just let it go black.”
Cooper Hoffman as Gary Valentine in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
It was similar to American Graffiti, Bauman says. “Haskell Wexler was like, ‘Dude, I got no money. So we’re just gonna light their faces and whatever happens in the background, hey bonus!’ And that’s what happened. So, we embraced that.
“When you’re talking about the aesthetic of it, for starters we’re already shooting film,” he adds. “Paul sits down with Dan Sasaki over at Panavision, who’s their lens guru. I mean, in a world of digital, lens choices and lensing have become more and more important. And Dan is this total propellerhead who goes in and is like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this glass from this Gordon Willis set of lenses back in like 1970. Let’s put that in something.’”
The film’s stellar supporting cast includes Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Tom Waits, John C. Reilly and Ben Stiller.
If that weren’t enough, there are also roles for two of Steven Spielberg’s daughters, Destry Allyn and Sasha Spielberg, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s father, George.
LicoricePizza may be set in an adjacent neighborhood to Burbank, but — like Quentin Tarantino’s 1969 set-piece,Once Upon A Time in Hollywood— references the ending of the Golden Age of American movie making by weaving in contextually rich characters. In Licorice Pizza these include Sean Penn’s character, which is based on famed actor William Holden; producer Jon Peters, played by Bradley Cooper; Fred Gwynne, the actor who portrayed Herman Munster, played by John C. Reilly; and talent agent Mary Grady, whose clients included Nick Nolte, Penny Marshall and Ashley Olsen.
Alana Haim as Alana Kane and Sean Penn as Jack Holden in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.” Cr: MGM
David Remnick speaks with Paul Thomas Anderson about the film in this episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour:
“Licorice Pizza seems to be the buzziest movie that is not about superheroes in ages,” Jason Hellerman notes in No Film School. “While it prepares to go wide, Anderson is quite aware that given the state of the industry, that feels special. So few original movies are given wide releases now. But the pandemic and the state of Hollywood are topics that affect us all.”
Want more? Watch a Q&A with Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman and Licorice Pizza director Paul Thomas Anderson in the video below:
Or watch PTA and Alana Haim discuss the making of Licorice Pizza in a conversation moderated by Justin Chang from the Los Angeles Times, below.
Editor Andy Jurgensen, who also worked as an assistant editor for director Jay Roach on The Campaign, Trumbo, and Bombshell, reflects on his career from serving as associate editor to Dylan Tichenor, ACE on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread to working with the director on Inherent Vice:
Complete Chaos Theory: Building the (Messy) Multiverse of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”
Writers and co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as the Daniels) take audiences on a heart-wrenching trip through the multiverse in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang. Cr: A24
Everything Everywhere All At Once lives up to its title. The Oscar-winning sci-fi comedy feature “takes the red-pill mind-screw of The Matrix and multiplies it by infinity,” according to Variety’s Peter Debruge, but that doesn’t necessarily mean audiences can handle the “gnarly three-dimensional sudoku puzzle” that results.
The movie stars Michelle Yeoh as a woman named Evelyn Wang who learns that she can experience endless dimensions simultaneously, and uses that power to attempt a reconciliation with her estranged daughter.
The internal logic of the film is complex, but the gist is that different decisions cause splinters in time, and, somewhere out there, anything that could have happened actually did. So, that means there is a timeline where Evelyn is not the lowly laundromat owner we first meet but is also a huge Hong Kong action star, an opera singer, a maid, and a teppanyaki-style chef… ad infinitum.
Writers and co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — collectively known as the Daniels — made the equally absurd Swiss Army Man, about a man who befriends Daniel Radcliffe’s semi-sentient corpse. This time around, the creative duo has the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War) producing, with A24 and Ley Line Entertainment, IAC and Josh Rudnick exec producing.
The film rushes headlong into unruly anarchy: Evelyn is plunged into the metaphysical world of “verse-jumping,” veering from the mundane dreariness of a IRS building to the palatial lair of a nihilistic villain, to the flashing lights of Hong Kong red carpets, to a deserted canyon where sentient rocks have an extended on-screen chat.
Critics say the unhinged imagination on display here will leave viewers exhausted, but that could be intentional. The filmmakers believe they’re saying something about the impact of the metaverse on our ability to truly see those near us.
“We could say a million things about [the film], but the most simple, honest thing is it’s about a mom learning to pay attention to her family in the chaos,” Kwan says. “The biggest seed that drove us through — that felt like a metaphor for what we’re going through right now in society — is this information overload.”
He adds, “People keep saying ‘empathy fatigue’ set in with Covid, but I feel like even before covid we were already there — there’s too much to care about and everyone’s lost the thread. That was the last key, turning this into a movie about empathy in the chaos.”
Information Overload
In an era of information overload, extreme polarization, and mass existential dread, the struggle to connect with family might feel less like a banal, everyday experience, and more of an increasingly confounding battle between a loved companion and a mortal enemy.
“In a lot of ways, the movie is just a family drama,” Scheinert says, “and then we came up with some of the most insane, enormous, overcomplicated hyperbolic metaphors for generational gaps, along with communication errors and ideological differences within a family.”
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang and Jing Li in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Writers and co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as the Daniels) take audiences on a heart-wrenching trip through the multiverse in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: A24
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang and Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra and Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: A24
Audrey Wasilewski as Alpha RV Officer #2 and Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, and Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Jenny Slate as Big Nose in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Harry Shum Jr. as Chad and Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang and Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang, Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, and James Hong as Gong Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra and Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang and Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
The film slyly tweaks the “hero’s journey” story beats that audiences have come to expect, squishing and stretching a three-act structure as if the movie itself were jumping through a fracturing multiverse.
“The result is a mess,” says Debruge, “but a meticulously planned and executed mess, where every shot, every sound effect and every sight gag fits exactly as the Daniels intended into this dense and cacophonous eyesore, which endeavors to capture the staggering burden of trying to exist in a world of boundless choice.”
The Daniels wanted that sense of infinity — of all of the possible worlds, the depthless rabbit holes, and all of the tiny moving pieces underneath it — to remain top-of-mind for the audience, even if that meant fraying their minds.
“There are enough ideas in Everything to fuel a dozen movies, or else a full-blown TV series, but the Daniels have shoehorned it all into a bombastic, emotionally draining 139 minutes,” writes Debruge.
“Moviegoers with limber imaginations may well appreciate the lunatic ambition and nutso execution of this high-concept hurricane, which ricochets like a live-action cartoon for most of that duration. But less versatile viewers will emerge frazzled, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing a stick of dynamite: their heads charred, blinking blankly as smoke wafts from their ears.”
The idea of generational love grounds the wildly chaotic narrative of Everything Everywhere All At Once, as Charles Pulliam-Moore notes at The Verge.
“It became our guiding light very early on,” Scheinert told Pulliam-Moore, describing how making the film about a family gave the Daniels free reign to experiment with some of their more outrageous ideas. “But the litmus test would be like, does that complement the journey of this family? A surprisingly weird array of things still complement the story of this family because they’re all distractible, and so anything that distracts them in a new and interesting way becomes a potential path,” he explains.
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang, Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, and James Hong as Gong Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
“I think one of the things about generational love that we kind of came to while making this was empathy,” Scheinert continues. “We tried to make an empathetic story about how hard it is for our parents’ generation to understand our generation. We tried not to oversimplify that idea by doing an ode to how beautiful it is when someone who grew up in a completely different way goes on the brave journey of trying to understand and support someone so different from themselves.”
“One of the things we realized was, like, we are going to be the old people soon,” Kwan added. “If progress is to happen, the older generation has to be willing to listen, and hopefully, they will listen in the way that they wish they were listened to. And the young generation will have to be kind and patient in the way that they hope that the next generation will be kind and patient with them. It’s obvious to say, of course, but it’s… I think it’s one of the hardest things any human has to do, and I’m hoping that this movie creates space for that kind of conversation because we’re in the middle of it right now. We need that kind of conversation.”
NPR film critic Justin Chang agrees: “For all its cosmic craziness, Everything Everywhere All At Once has a simple emotional message: It’s about how the members of this immigrant family learn to cherish each other again,” he notes in his review.
“It’s also about making peace with the life you’ve lived — and the ones you haven’t. And that sort of sums up how I feel about this funny, messy, moving and often exasperating movie: There may be a better, more focused version of it in some other universe, but I’m still grateful for the one we’ve got.”
Most of the visuals for Everything Everywhere were captured in a warehouse in Simi Valley. “It was big enough that we could wreck one part of the building, then walk away and just go somewhere else in the complex to continue filming while our team restored the initial part of the building,” says production designer Jason Kisvarday.
The film was shot by Swiss Army Man DP Larkin Seiple and edited with manic intensity by Paul Rogers using split screens and blurry overlay effects.
“The directors don’t shy away from the use of dizzying flashing lights, or rapidly shifting light sources that disorient the viewer,” Aurora Amidon notes in her review for Paste. “They also aren’t afraid to implement over-the-top images, like a person’s head exploding into confetti or a butt-naked man flying in slow-motion toward the camera. At the same time, movement between ‘verses feels seamless through Rogers’ meticulous editing, as does the effortless fashion in which different aspect ratios melt into one another.”
Rogers, who has also edited the feature films The Death of Dick Long and You Cannot Kill David Arquette, and the TV series Dream Corp LLC and The Eric Andrew Show, discussed how Everything Everywhere was assembled with The Art of the Cut podcast host Steve Hullfish.
“They pitched it to me as ‘We want to make a film, and then we want to break that film, and then we want it to rebuild itself,’” he recounted during the episode.
“It’s hard to describe,” he adds. “It just reaches a point where you have to let go of trying to hold it together as a viewer in your mind, and trying to make sense of everything and fit everything together. You’re going on this journey with Evelyn, the character, and part of her journey is learning to let go.”
During editing, Rogers used Adobe Premiere Pro to create split screens and other effects. “Premiere has always been wonderful because it disappears when I’m using it,” he says.
“I love to split the screen and combine performances or just change the timings between actors, make someone react or speak over a line versus waiting their turn. And I love to be able to do that in a two shot or a wide shot, but that’s just not how the scene plays out.
“So I use Premiere all over this film to do that, to the point where I just didn’t tell them. When they got into finishing the VFX supervisors, Zak Stoltz said there were about 30 VFX shots that he wasn’t aware of. There are all these little split-screen things or changing an extra out in the background, or, even a prop.
“Sometimes the way a prop was placed was better in one shot than another shot, so I would throw that in. I can temp together VFX in Premiere in a heartbeat.”
Listen to the full episode in the player below:
Watch Rogers discuss the collaborative, cloud-based post workflow for Everything Everywhere All At Once at the 2022 NAB Show with Adobe’s Meagan Keene:
You can also watch Rogers and Keene in conversation on the NAB Amplify stage at the 2022 NAB Show:
Infinite Storytelling Possibilities
While Everything Everywhere offers a treasure hunt of eclectic cinematic references — ranging from 2001: A Space Odyssey and In the Mood For Love to Ratatouille — Kwan insists their voice is far from that of a cinephile, but was honed rather through things like YouTube videos, Tim and Eric sketches, and the form-breaking anarchy of Japanese anime movies.
“We would put our stuff online, and the algorithm would push it because it was so insane, and then we’d get attention and that positive reinforcement,” Kwan recalls. “We were like, oh, I guess we should be more insane.”
The film is also their response to other multiverse sci-fi movies that annoyed them. Star Trek’s 2009 reboot by JJ Abrams might have featured two Spocks, but they felt this twist didn’t make near enough of the mind-bending opportunity.
“My pet peeve is time travel when you introduce it and just do a tiny bit like it’s no big deal,” Scheinert told Eric Kohn at IndieWire. “It would be such a big deal! Like if logic broke down and time didn’t move forward and a million people could go back in time a million number of times there’d be absolute chaos.”
“This movie is 100 percent a response to The Matrix, obviously,” Kwan added. “We wanted to make our version of it.”
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang and Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Cr: Allyson Riggs/A24
He’s specifically talking about the original Matrix film’s iconic fighting scenes. “There’s something so entertaining and visceral about it, and we wanted to try to take that kind of energy and satisfying filmmaking and point it towards love and understanding,” Kwan says. “We don’t know how to do that, but we want to see it on the big screen.”
The film has also just satirized the trajectory of Marvel’s ever-expanding universe. With an MCU increasingly folding over on itself with actors playing the same (or different versions of) characters from past movies (Spider-Man: No Way Home) or opening portals into other storylines (the entire Loki series — which the Daniels apparently turned down an offer from Marvel to make), not to mention explicit references as in the forthcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it’s clear that the multiverse will be a recurring theme for years to come.
“It’s no wonder that the idea of the multiverse is so popular within the sci-fi genre when there are infinite storytelling opportunities,” Gavin Spoors observes at Space. “When films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse come around, it proves how powerful and exciting the multiverse can be. With infinite universes, comes infinite possibilities.”
Want more? In this episode of Vanity Fair’s “Notes on a Scene,” Everything Everywhere star Michelle Yeoh and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert discuss how they filmed this action-packed fight scene between Evelyn and Deirdre:
Talking to Insider, stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich and fight choreographers Andy Le and Brian Le break downhow the movie’s most impressive action sequences came together. From classic Hong Kong movies and Jackie Chan action figures to break dancing and parkour, Eulich and the Le share what inspired them and the various references they used for EverythingEverywhere.
In an episode of NPR’s Short Wave podcast with host Emily Kwong, the Daniels break down how an indie film about laundry and taxes blends the arts with sciences:
Watch the Daniels break down the scene where Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) uses his fanny pack to take down a phalanx of security guards.
“Every good action movie has to have a good kickoff action sequence,” Kwan says, adding that the directors wanted to “show off what this movie is going to be, but in a way that is mysterious, in a way that hopefully causes you to ask a lot of questions and want to keep watching.”
Confused about why Evelyn Wang places a googly eye on her forehead during the film’s climactic sequence? In this video essay, Accented Cinema explains it all, breaking down the hidden metaphors within Everything Everywhere All At Once:
The Daniels also sat down with visual effects artist Zak Stoltz to discuss how the small budget for the film forced them to get creative, especially when it comes to the special and visual effects, in order to create something unique:
Want to learn more about the sound of Everything Everywhere All At Once? In an interview with Dolby, sound designer and sound effects editor Andrew Twite and re-recording mixer and sound supervisor Brent Kiser are joined by the Daniels to discuss their creation.
“We knew we wanted to create something that somehow bridged the gap between big blockbuster action films and really intimate risk-taking indie films,” says Kwan. “And we wanted to find a way to do both at the same time. To carve out space for independent films in theaters, because that’s something that’s slowly being carved out more for these big, big IP blockbuster films.”
If you’re looking for more candid moments with the duo, Alamo Drafthouse asked the Daniels to pitch a concept on the spot for a Don’t Talk/Don’t Text PSA that goes… very sideways:
Exploring the Cinematic References of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”
From The Matrix and Ratatouille to the films of Wong Kar-wai, the hit indie sci-fi feature from the Daniels is filled with “trippy cinematic homages,” writes Vanity Fair’s Yohana Desta.
By Jennifer Wolfe
Over at Vanity Fair, Hollywood writer Yohana Desta takes a deep dive into Everything Everywhere All At Once, examining the abundance of movie homages the Daniels managed to pack into their hit indie sci-fi feature.
Characterizing the film as “a giant nerd,” Desta says, “It’s also a whirlpool, a fun house, an unpredictable Russian doll of ideas and feelings and things, dense with trippy plot points about parallel universes and metaphors about familial love and acceptance. But it’s also a movie about movies, layered with references that not only pay homage to classic films of the past, but also reanimate them with unhinged verve.”
The Matrix
“This movie is one hundred percent a response to The Matrix, obviously,” Daniel Kwan said ahead of the film’s SXSW premiere, Desta notes. “We wanted to make our version of it.”
The film’s press notes detail an afternoon double feature of The Matrix and Fight Club Kwan saw in 1999, and how the experience helped reinvigorate his love of cinema. “I was like, man, if I could just make something half as fun as The Matrix is, but with our own stamp and our spirits, I would just die happy,” he said.
Kung Fu Classics
Everything Everywhere All At Once contains countless nods to martial arts, as Desta observes, including classic kung fu movies such as Clan of the White Lotus, and more recent movies like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series.
“The biggest nod arrives in the form of Evelyn’s kung fu master, played by Li Jing,” Desta writes. “With her fluffy white eyebrows, mustache, and beard, she’s a direct play on the classic Bak Mei, or Pai Mei character, a kung fu master whose likeness has been portrayed in numerous 1970s and 1980s-era Hong Kong films like Clan of the White Lotus and Executioners From Shaolin.”
2001: A Space Odyssey
Everything Everywhere riffs on the classic opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which shows early hominids discovering the monolith featured in the sci-fi classic.
“But the scene also delivers the viewers into a rather peaceful moment in the otherwise chaotic film,” Desta points out: “In one of her parallel lives, Evelyn is a prehistoric rock, silently observing and enjoying the natural world… for a few moments, anyway.”
Ratatouille
“Nowhere is Everything Everywhere more chaotically unbridled than in the ‘Racacoonie’ scenes,” Desta writes, pointing to the film’s hilarious send-up of Pixar’s animated hit Ratatouille, which has Evelyn fighting a rival hibachi chef controlled by a racoon hiding under his toque.
“But the Daniels don’t just float the concept as a comic idea,” she says. “They follow through, returning again and again to the subplot as Chad loses Racacoonie to villainous pest control and, with the help of Evelyn, rescues his furry friend. Rescuing Racacoonie becomes part of the narrative, showing Evelyn’s strength and dogged pursuit of being the hero.”
In the Mood for Love
From director Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love.”
“In terms of style and narrative, the Daniels could not be further from someone like Wong Kar-wai,” Desta hypothesizes, “And yet, during a handful of scenes in Everything Everywhere, the duo pays painstaking homage to the director’s oeuvre, particularly his 2000 classic In the Mood for Love.”
One of Evelyn’s parallel lives is an action movie hero, much like the film’s star, Michelle Yeoh, and Everything Everywhere employs real-life sequences of Yeoh on the red carpet to depict her counterpart. Some of the the most moving moments occur between movie star Evelyn and her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), evoking the lush, moody visuals of the Chinese film director’s 2001 art house hit.
“…In that parallel life, Evelyn learns that her success is only possible because she chooses not to be with Waymond, forging a different path ahead,” writes Desta. “Waymond somehow finds his way to the premiere of her latest movie, and the two go outside for a one-on-one conversation. It’s moody and dark, stylized with the same romantic energy as the corridor scenes in In the Mood for Love, in which Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play two neighbors who can never be together, and must resort to exchanging longing looks that no one else can catch.”
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Is an Ode to the Internet
By Abby Spessard
If Everything Everywhere All At Once reminds you of the internet, that’s not an accident. The Daniels — filmmaking duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — wanted their film to reflect the tumultuous, rapid-fire zeitgeist of the vast global network that comprises the World Wide Web.
The movie portrays the “uncanny delirium of digital life,” Alex Pasternack writes for Fast Company, complete with “doomscrolling and context-collapsing and flipping between wildly divergent and often confounding realities — between videos of war and wildfires and an awards-show slap — and whatever all of this is doing to our brains and our relationships.”
Speaking with Pasternack, the Daniels shared how they questioned whether a film set in the absurd chaos of infinite universes could have any meaning. Because if everything is possible, does any of it matter?
As it turns out, yes. We create our own meaning, just as we do online. The internet is a form of multiverse in itself, Pasternack argues, capable of creating unique realities for every individual person who uses it. “In the metaverse as in the multiverse, you can see things and perspectives you never knew existed — or you can live in whatever world you please, all others be damned,” he comments. “The characters of Everything don’t mention the internet, but it looms over everything.”
The Daniels conjure Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu), a mother and daughter duo struggling with their own multiple identities. Joy’s alter ego, Jobu Tabacky, is “a bizarro, omnipotent version of Evelyn’s daughter,” as Pasternack writes, who personifies the worst parts of the internet, creating an Everything Bagel of doom that threatens the very existence of the multiverse.
The film’s high stakes echo the equally high stakes we experience in real life.
“Specifically for us: we are millennials, we grew up on the internet, we were the first generation to do so, and our parents didn’t,” Kwan explains. “And so I think that made that gap just a chasm. And so the movie uses the multiverse almost as a metaphor for how the internet has destroyed our minds. And how our parents are trying to figure out how to fix this.”
After more than year’s worth of buzz, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” fulfilled the promise of its critical acclaim at the 2023 Academy Awards. The A24 film was the biggest winner of the evening, taking home Oscars in seven categories, making it the “most-awarded best picture winner since 2008’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’” per Variety.
EEAAO’s wins:
Best Picture
Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh)
Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan)
Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis)
Best Director (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
Best Original Screenplay (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
Best Film Editing
It was also nominated for Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, and the film’s Stephanie Hsu was also put forward for the Best Supporting Actress category but lost to Curtis (and her hotdog fingers).
Backed by hard science, cosmologist George Ellis arranges the four distinct “levels” of the multiverse into a hierarchy.
March 22, 2022
How “Atlanta” Is “Everywhere and Nowhere”
From “Atlanta” season 3, courtesy of FX
For the brothers Glover, Donald and Stephen, Atlanta is a state of mind. Four years after the end of season 2, the Emmy-winning and multi-award nominated comedy-drama returns but characteristically not in the form you expect.
“‘Atlanta’ is everywhere and nowhere,” says Stephen Glover, who writes and produces on the series. LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, Zazie Beetz as Van, Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks, and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles. CR: Matthias Clamer/FX
“Atlanta is everywhere and nowhere,” Stephen Glover, who writes and produces on the series, told Variety.
“It’s our point of view; it’s not really about the place,” show creator and star Donald Glover adds. “Although in Season 4, [Atlanta] makes a very heavy resurgence, as far as the actual place. Europe solidified how we felt while writing Season 3. [Director Hiro Murai] calls it our maximum season.”
Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Matthias Clamer/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Matthias Clamer/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius and Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Donald Glover as Earn Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Fans of the FX show, also streaming on Hulu, will know that S2 left off with Earn (Donald Glover), his cousin Alfred aka Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) and Alfred’s right-hand man Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) setting off to Amsterdam for Alfred’s rap tour playing for largely white audiences. Season 3, which debuts on FX this week, was shot almost entirely in Europe (London mainly with location work in Amsterdam and Paris).
“It’s a very honest season,” said actor Zazie Beetz who was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Van. “All of the characters are out of their element, which allows things to rise to the surface that you would otherwise be able to, in habits and in comfort, suppress. And here, you can’t, because you have nothing to catch you. It’s a lot of truth and reflections of where we’re all at as ourselves and as people.”
Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, Donald Glover as Earn Marks, and Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles and Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: CR: Rob Youngson/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: CR: Coco Olakunle/FX
The series, which premiered in 2016, is notable for having an all-black writing staff. The writer’s room consists of the two Glovers, and members of Donald’s rap collective “Royalty” including Fam Udeorji (Glover’s manager), Ibra Ake (Glover’s longtime photographer), and Jamal Olori. Stefani Robinson and Taofik Kolade round out the writer’s room.
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles and Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Coco Olakunle/FX
“We just wanted to make a Black fairytale,” Glover tells Variety. “I remember sitting in the writers’ room and being like, ‘What do we write about?’ We just wanted to do short stories. Something I would want to watch.”
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
“In short, based on what I’ve seen, it is a true American masterpiece,” writes Dominic Patten. “You should sit down and watch the episodes to banquet upon the artistry that permeates Atlanta.”
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius and Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
Donald Glover as Earnest “Earn” Marks in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Oliver Upton/FX
Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles and LaKeith Stanfield as Darius in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Rob Youngson/FX
LaKeith Stanfield as Darius and Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Rob Youngson/FX
Justin Hagan as Miles, Indy Sullivan Groudis as Sebastian Warner, and Christina Bennett Lind as Bronwyn Warner in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Christina Bennett Lind as Bronwyn Warner and Indy Sullivan Groudis as Sebastian Warner in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
The first episode of the new season, “Three Slaps,” “exists at an intersection of race, class, and madness,” says Variety reviewer Daniel D’Addario, and apparently draws on the 2018 massacre in which two white women, a married couple, murdered their six adopted children (all of them Black).
Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
Adriyan Rae as Candice, Zazie Beetz as Van, Shanice Castro as Shanice, and Xosha Roquemore as Xosha in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
Adriyan Rae as Candice and Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
Xosha Roquemore as Xosha, Adriyan Rae as Candice, and Zazie Beetz as Van in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Roger Do Minh/FX
The second episode has the characters confronted at every turn by white Europeans in blackface, “as part of a Christmas celebration that comes very rapidly to look and feel like a society-wide parade of mockery.”
D’Addario continues, “Glover continues to find new ways to register a sort of unsurprised confusion, baffled at what’s unfolding around him but hardly shocked that it’s incomprehensible.”
Tyriq Withers as Aaron and Rachel Resheff as Kate in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Indy Sullivan Groudis as Sebastian Warner and Christina Bennett Lind as Bronwyn Warner in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Tyriq Withers as Aaron in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Justin Bartha as Marshall Johnson in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Kevin Samuels as Robert “Shea” Lee in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Justin Bartha as Marshall Johnson in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Tyriq Withers as Aaron in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
George Wallace as Greg, Kevin Samuels as Robert “Shea” Lee, and Anthony Daugherty as Jay in season 3 of “Atlanta.” Cr: Guy D’Alema/FX
Series director of photography Christian Sprenger recently won the 2022 Emmy award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour) for his camerawork on “Three Slaps,” the premiere episode of Atlanta’s long-awaited third season.
Because of its compact size, Sprenger opted to employ the ARRI Alexa MiniLF digital cinema camera equipped with Olympus Zuiko lenses for the episode, as he explained to IndieWire’s Erik Adams and Chris O’Falt:
“Loquareeous is a young man thrust into an unknown world that feels daunting and dangerous. The compact size of the MiniLF camera body allowed for a close intimacy in an all practical location show while still capturing that feeling of everything being a bit larger than life,” he says. “The Olympus Zuikos lenses by Zero Optik strike that perfect sweet spot between unique characteristics and prestige image rendering all while still covering full frame sensor.”
Want more? Donald Glover talks with Variety at the premiere of Season 3 of Atlanta, giving his thoughts on the return of the series:
The new season had some viewers wondering why “the world of Donald Glover’s Atlanta feels… off?” Watch film critic Thomas Flight’s video essay exploring why that might be the case:
For another perspective on why Season 3 feels so different from prior seasons, watch this video essay by MitraKesava:
also asking why Season 3 feels so different from prior seasons:
See for yourself whether the show feels different this season by watching the trailers for episodes three, four, seven, and eight:
Want more of Paper Boi from Atlanta? Check out these clips of the up-and-coming rapper in the series:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Virtual Production But Sort of Real Pirates (?): Making “Our Flag Means Death”
HBO Max’s pirate comedy “Our Flag Means Death” employed virtual production techniques, using ultra-high-resolution imagery of the ocean displayed on a massive 30 by 160-foot LED wall to deliver a believable version of the open sea.
https://youtu.be/xFE8ASwxmpA
Watch Our 2022 NAB Show Session: Virtual Production and Visual Effects on HBO Max’s “Our Flag Means Death”
Show creator David Jenkins pitched a workplace comedy about pirates to Taika Waititi and his old Flight of the Conchords and What We Do In The Shadows collaborator Rhys Darby, but with one huge difference. They didn’t need to go to sea to make it.
Jenkins didn’t mean shooting in tanks like they did for the film Master and Commander (for that film they also bought a three-masted frigate to shoot at sea, even rounding Cape Horn). Jenkins was talking about employing an LED volume where the majority of the action could take place.
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Rory Kinnear as Captain Nigel Badminton in season 1 episode 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Ewen Bremner as Buttons and Michael Crane as Officer Wellington in season 1 episode 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Samba Schutte as Roach in season 1 episode 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
William Barber-Holler as Louis Bonnet, Claudia O’Doherty as Mary Bonnet, Eden Grace Redfield as Alma Bonnet, and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
He shared his thought process with Jack Giroux at Slash Film. “You’re like, ‘Oh, they’re on water the whole time. Oh. How are we going to shoot this?’ We came up with a poor man’s version of The Mandalorian, where we had this giant LED screen around the ship and they just went with it.”
Guz Khan as Ivan, Con O’Neill as Izzy Hands, and David Fane as Fang in season 1 episode 2 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 2 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Con O’Neill as Izzy Hands season 1 episode 2 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 2 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Vico Ortiz as Jim in season 1 episode 2 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
“Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
This poor man’s version was actually based on a massive 30-foot by 160-foot LED wall designed to surround the practical pirate ship built on set.
Now streaming its first season on HBO Max, Our Flag Means Death features Waititi and Darby as two very different types of pirate, but both grounded in history, as Polygon’s Tasha Robinson explains: “The show’s silly confrontations, outsized characters, and weird story developments are all drawn from real history. Stede Bonnet, the ‘Gentleman Pirate,’ played by Darby was an actual 18th-century plantation owner who abandoned his wife and children, bought a ship, declared himself its captain in spite of his lack of nautical experience.
“He did in fact wind up partnering with Blackbeard — played by Waititi, in a troubled relationship seemingly designed to fuel plot twists.”
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 3 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Ewen Bremner as Buttons in season 1 episode 3 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Leslie Jones as Spanish Jackie, Nathan Foad as Lucius, and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 3 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Matthew Maher as Black Pete, Samba Schutte as Roach, and Joel Fry as Frenchie in season 1 episode 3 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, Fred Armisen as Geraldo, and Ewen Bremner as Buttons in season 1 episode 3 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
The two stars were keen to play the parts and perhaps even realize a new dawn for pirate-based comedy (there had never been a really good one because of the troubles of shooting at sea). Carly Lane at Collider thought that the show hit the right tone, “Our Flag Means Death tackles a blend of fictional characters positioned opposite of actual historic figures, and the results are the equivalent of a comedic treasure chest overflowing with one-liner gems and some surprisingly tender moments between its leads to boot.”
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 444 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Con O’Neill as Izzy Hands and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 4 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Nathan Foad as Lucius, Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, Matthew Maher as Black Pete, and David Fane as Fang in season 1 episode 4 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Claudia O’Doherty as Mary Bonnet in season 1 episode 4 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Vico Ortiz as Jim in season 1 episode 4 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
The secret of its success is quickly revealed to be the chemistry between the two leads, Darby and Waititi. “…but where the series actually offers one of its biggest surprises is by shifting the relationship between them to something that isn’t antagonistic but looks a whole lot more like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Robinson, in her review, agrees that this is where the magic is, “…in particular, Darby and Waititi’s performances just keep getting better and more nuanced as the show unfolds. Once the show moves into deeper waters both men put so much charm and nuance into these characters that the series would be worth watching just to see them interact.”
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 5 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Joel Fry as Frenchie and Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 5 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Kristen schaal as Antoinette in season 1 episode 5 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Kristen schaal as Antoinette and Nick Kroll as Gabriel in season 1 episode 5 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Nathan Foad as Lucius in season 1 episode 5 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Mashable’s Belen Edwards thought that the show would work even without the historical association, “Overall, Our Flag Means Death reimagines elements of the pirate genre to create a gem of a comedy series. It manages to be equal parts swashbuckling adventure, sitcom, and character study. Whether you’re a pirate expert or you’ve never heard of Blackbeard in your life, you won’t regret setting sail with Captain Stede Bonnet and his crew.”
Joel Fry as Frenchie, Nat Faxon as The Swede, Samba Schutte as Roach, and Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 6 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Matthew Maher as Black Pete in season 1 episode 6 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 6 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 6 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 6 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Jenkins, the show’s creator, and star Waititi had admitted that the pirate theme wasn’t one that they had the biggest confidence in, but they hoped the lure of the historical connection would chime with the audience.
This is how they did the title cards for eps 2 & 5🏴☠️ Make up created that prosthetic, with hair, nipples and all. And art department used real seaweed to be washed away by the ocean. Pretty much every title card was painted or carved into. Except the moon☠️🖤 #OurFlagMeansDeathpic.twitter.com/wFdPsRASDm
Jenkins told Cheryl Eddy at Gizmodo how he thought that Stede’s story would be relatable, “Hearing about this guy and reading about him and seeing that, you know, he left his family, then he met Blackbeard, they hit it off, and we don’t know any of the details in between. So filling those blanks in, and having a very human story, and then being able to do it with the pirate genre, that was like, ‘Oh, this would be cool.’
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
“In designing the show, I was conscious [of the fact that it’s] a hard genre to do anything to. It’s a very stubborn genre because it’s been done so well and so often.”
But ultimately the pull of the show is maybe something to do with a freedom that we all treasure, as Jenkins explained to Mashable, “It’s a crime spree,” says Jenkins. “I think that’s what’s interesting about it to me. There’s a Bonnie and Clyde quality to this life, where they just decided to live really hard and die quickly. And wow, what a choice to make.”
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Selenis Leyva as The Nun in season 1 episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Selenis Leyva as The Nun and Vico Ortiz as Jim in season 1 episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Vico Ortiz as Jim and Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Once the virtual production aspect of the show had been decided on, the production team next had to determine how to create a kind-of period comedy that delivered the realism of being on the open sea. But the sea is vast, and figuring out what would be most believable became a big challenge.
Nathan Foad as Lucius Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 8 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Samson Kayo as Oluwande in season 1 episode 8 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Vico Ortiz as Jim and Leslie Jones as Spanish Jackie in season 1 episode 8 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Will Arnett as Calico Jack in season 1 episode 8 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Will Arnett as Calico Jack, Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 8 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
It fell to Sam Nicholson and his visual effects team at Stargate Studios to capture ultra-high-resolution imagery of actual ocean footage with the intention of stitching together multiple plates, then displaying the imagery on the LED wall.
“Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
As Nicholson told NAB Amplify, “We tend to take impossible tasks and make them possible. How to shoot stable 48K 360-degree plates from a boat off Puerto Rico is complex problem solving to the extreme.”
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 9 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 9 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, Taika Waititi as Blackbeard, and Rory Kinnear as Captain Nigel Badminton in season 1 episode 9 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 9 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 9 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
In the beginning, Nicholson’s team shot HDR plates with a 360-degree, eight camera rig comprised of Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pros at 45-degree increments. Continuing the shoot in Puerto Rico, Nicholson refined the process with a 270-degree capture, multi-camera array, which provided better control and even higher resolution.
The Stargate team synchronized five Blackmagic Design URSA Mini 12K cameras for a total horizontal resolution of 60K. Recording directly to multiple SanDisk 4TB SSDs on board the 12K cameras, the team shot Blackmagic RAW, which allowed real-time playback in DaVinci Resolve Studio at multiple resolutions.
Claudia O’Doherty as Mary Bonnet and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 10 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 10 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in season 1 episode 10 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, Claudia O’Doherty as Mary Bonnet, and Tim Heidecker as Doug in season 1 episode 10 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in season 1 episode 10 of “Our Flag Means Death.” Cr: Warner Media
In preparation, the Stargate team processed the footage, stitching each camera together in DaVinci Resolve Studio, then created a live feed from multiple Resolves through the Blackmagic Design ATEM Constellation 8K switcher. The final color timed composite was then fed into Epic’s Unreal 4 game engine for camera tracking and off-axis distribution to the 20K LED wall.
Nicholson knew he had a successful effect from the LED volume when the HBO executives came for a visit. “They came to the ship set to check-up on the progress. When we hit playback and they started feeling seasick, I knew we had done our job correctly.”
Series cinematographer Carl Herse created seven separate looks for “The Afterparty,” bringing them all together for the final episode. Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner in episode 1 “The Afterparty,” produced by Oscar-winning duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Cr: Apple TV+
Chris Miller and Phil Lord’s new Apple TV+ series has something to offer cinephiles and murder-mystery fans alike.
The co-creators of The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse have conjured another slice of entertaining pop culture.
Not only does every episode focuses on a different version of the same events, Rashomon-style, but they’re all defined by an artful cinematic twist in execution.
Zoë Chao as Zoë and Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 1 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier in episode 1 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 1 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Sam Richardson as Aniq and Ben Schwartz as Yasper in episode 1 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ike Barinholtz as Brett and Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 1 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Watching The Afterparty is like a game of “spot the reference,” sums up Mashable critic Adam Rosenberg.
Each murder suspect’s story is presented as their own, personal “mind movie.” The extended flashbacks that dominate the show’s individual chapters are fashioned after whatever Hollywood genre best fits the character’s point of view. If this sounds like a winning combo, Apple must agree; the streamer recently announced it was renewing the show for a second season.
In addition to directing, Miller serves as showrunner and is executive producing alongside Lord through the pair’s production banner, Lord Miller. The setup is the afterparty of a high school reunion, where a palatial cliffside mansion becomes a crime scene with everyone a suspect. Oh, and it’s a comedy. Among the stars are Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz and Ilana Glazer.
Ben Schwartz as Yasper and Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Jokes aside: The Afterparty is a bona fide whodunit,” says Rosenberg, delivering a growing pile of clues that challenge viewers to develop their own theories. Apple’s weekly release strategy is an asset here, creating space for viewers to spend time thinking, rewatching, and theorizing.”
Carl Herse served as director of photography for the entire series. He and Miller seemed to have a lot of fun discussing which movies could serve as references for each genre, and what techniques they could use to perfect each episode’s aesthetic.
Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ike Barinholtz as Brett in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier and Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ike Barinholtz as Brett and Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ike Barinholtz as Brett and Jamie Demetriou as Walt in episode 2 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Once they had a list of cinematic references, they began identifying similarities — filtration, lenses, camera movement, styles evocative of each genre.
“For example,” Herse shares with Mary Littlejohn at TVFanatic, “rom-com has longer lenses, the camera will do more aspirational crane moves, and have warm color situations with everyone lit cosmetically.
Ben Schwartz as Yasper in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Sam Richardson as Aniq and Jamie Demetriou as Walt in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier and Ben Schwartz as Yasper in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tiya Sircar as Jennifer #1, Ben Schwartz as Yasper, and Ayden Mayeri as Jennifer #2 in episode 3 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
“In the action genre, the camera is crazy and moving through space with cooler and more electric vibes, and we tried to channel John Wick by adding lots of neon and colored lights in the background that flared the lens.”
The final episode challenged the cinematographer to bring each of the seven looks of the show together.
“We want it to all feel different, but you also want to feel like a progression,” Herse tells Sarah Shachat at IndieWire. “We go from wider aspect ratios at the beginning of the season to taller aspect ratios by the end. But then when we got to Episode 8, Chris and I started scratching our heads.”
Illana Glazer as Chelsea and Ike Barinholtz as Brett in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
The solution, they found, wasn’t to create a new look, but to blend the styles they’d already spent time establishing. “We found that it was important to start bleeding the different genres into one another. So [in the finale] we’ve got Yasper (Ben Schwartz) moving through an environment, but it’s lit and color corrected in the more de-saturated tones that you saw in the [thriller episodes].”
Herse and Miller also started blending approaches to camera movement in the finale, so that even within individual scenes it feels like the voices of the characters, each with their own very stylized and defined visual identity, start to clash.
Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier and Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier in episode 4 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
“Anything where Danner is holding court is shot in a very formal studio mode with tableaus and all the cast standing in depth. Whereas whenever you’re with Aniq [Sam Richardson] and Yasper, it’s handheld because they’re kind of scrambling around in the background,” Herse said.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
This was all the more impressive because the series was shot out of chronological order and needed to keep minute track of each episode’s look. “We had kind of a cheat sheet for each genre that would say, ‘Okay, now we’re in this format, we’re at this ISO, we’re using these lenses, this filtration,’” Herse said. “But,” he added, “We would always end by going to this wide shot. And then in the lighting and the tone and in the format, we would return, and we had little invisible marks laid out in the set.”
Herse took special care to match the camera’s mark as well as the actors, noting the height and angle of the lens, and figured out how to make a shot that worked across the show’s different aspect ratios.
Jamie Demetriou as Walt in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier, Sam Richardson as Aniq, and Ben Schwartz as Yasper in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamie Demetriou as Walt in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Jamie Demetriou as Walt and Dave Franco as Xavier in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Zoë Chao as Zoë, Ayden Mayeri as Jennifer #2, and Tiya Sircar as Jennifer #1 in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
“The shots match up perfectly when they’re seen one after the other in the final reveal, which feels to the viewer like incontrovertible evidence of the truth,” Shachat notes. “No matter how many different ways we see the action and no matter how many different genres get draped over it, the way the actors line up is gloriously, joyfully the same.”
Speaking to TVFanatic’s Littlejohn, Herse elaborated further, “We had the present timeline, with the interviews and everything happening in the present tense, which also had to have its own strong look. We wanted that to have that Knives Out-style, the ‘locked-room mystery’ genre as it’s called.
Zoë Chao as Zoë, Ike Barinholtz as Brett, and Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 5 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
“For the different ways of achieving our flashback looks, we would carry four different lens sets to rotate, different filtration, and shooting with different aspects ratios.
“Then, from a lighting standpoint, it’s all so different. On a day of filming, and again we’re shooting everything all at once, my gaffer and I would have to light sets so that you were in a romantic comedy, and then with the push of a button and a few minutes of tweaks, you were in a John Wick movie.
“It was essential in pre-production to build all our looks into the set, the moment you’re rigging the stages, to plan it out. In the moment, you rarely have much time, so it’s really about jumping between looks.”
Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner in episode 7 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Fred Savage as Vaughn in episode 7 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Barbie Ferreira as Willow in episode 7 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner and Jimmy Tatro as Officer Kleyes in episode 7 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Reid Scott as Aldrin Germain and Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner in episode 7 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Herse revealed that his personal favorite episode was the thriller (Episode 4) because, “What you’re doing is not additive in the way that’s you do a romantic comedy, with strong lighting looks and backlights. In this episode, you’re just stripping things away, making it mysterious, and being expressive with things like rain, darkness, and shadow. It’s really about limiting yourself.”
According to an interview with Drew Taylor for The Wrap, the filmmakers turned to Lindsey Olivares, the production designer of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, which Lord and Miller produced, to design the characters for the animated episode. Olivares’s designs were then handed off to animation studio ShadowMachine, which provided the animation for the series.
Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Dave Franco as Xavier and Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Zoë Chao as Zoë and Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Sam Richardson as Aniq and Zoë Chao as Zoë in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Zoë Chao as Zoë and Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
John Early as Detective Culp in episode 6 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Juggling live action production timelines with animation in the mix was just one of the hurdles the creative team faced, as Miller explained to Taylor. “The trick of it was we were trying to do this animation production pipeline while we were shooting the show because it takes so long to make animation,” he said. “And that meant as the actors would get fitted for their costumes, we’d get pictures of those costumes and then send those pictures to Lindsey so she could draw the characters. And as we shot the scenes for the other episodes in the sets, we’re like, ‘OK, well, here’s what this location looks like. And here’s what another version of that scene looks like.’
“We’d take pictures and send them along to the animation team and say, ‘OK, now I know we need to set this scene in this room. Well, this is what it looks like. We just shot it for the first time today. So now you can draw the background so that we can put the characters in it so that we can animate the scene for it.’ It was a really weird production pipeline, because we’re trying to do it simultaneously with shooting rather than after we finished making the show, and be, ‘OK, now let’s make an animated episode.’ ”
Tiya Sircar as Jennifer #1 and Kelvin Yu as Ned in episode 8 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ben Schwartz as Yasper and Sam Richardson as Aniq in episode 8 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Ike Barinholtz as Brett in episode 8 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Illana Glazer as Chelsea in episode 8 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Tiffany Haddish as Detective Danner and John Early as Detective Culp in episode 8 of “The Afterparty.” Cr: Apple TV+
Want more? Watch The Hollywood Reporter’s Mikey O’Connell discuss the series with actors Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Jamie Demetriou and Zoë Chao:
Or watch this Q&A from In Creative Company moderated by Variety’s Jenelle Reiley featuring Schwartz, Barinholtz, Sam Richardson, Tiffany Haddish and Dave Franco:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Pop Will Eat Itself: The Ultimate Manufactured Warhol
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See trends and topics like this and more come to life at NAB Show in Las Vegas. Explore the latest tools and advanced workflows elevating the art of storytelling.
For producer Ryan Murphy, the primary goal of “The Andy Warhol Diaries” was to “recontextualize Warhol as somebody who had loves and lovers.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol’s greatest artwork was himself, as the saying goes. The pop culture artist not only dabbled in cinema, advertising and the mechanics of image production, but has featured in dozens of documentaries and film since his death, either peripherally or, as in this case, center stage.
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
The Andy Warhol Diaries is the new six-part documentary on Netflix leaning heavily on a memoir dictated by Warhol over the phone to journalist Pat Hackett beginning in 1976 up until Warhol’s death in 1987.
It’s written and directed by Andrew Rossi and produced by Ryan Murphy, whose primary goal, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “is to recontextualize Warhol as somebody who had loves and lovers.”
While there are countless interviews with those who knew him, or are admirers, there are also dramatic reconstructions. The meat of the episodes focus on the artist’s relationship with three lovers: Jed Johnson, Jon Gould and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The first was a 12-year relationship following the events of Mary Harron’s 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol, explains THR, the second a multi-year relationship that had to be kept somewhat secret because of Gould’s job as an executive at Paramount. The third, which has been central to narrative films, documentaries and even a current play in London, was not necessarily a sexual relationship, but an emotionally rich pairing used here to reveal Warhol’s attitudes toward class and race.
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
What has raised eyebrows is the use of narration recorded as if it were from Warhol. The project had an actor, Bill Irwin, record the lines, then used a text-to-speech algorithm that adopted Warhol’s Pittsburgh accent. The voices were then combined in an attempt to come as close as possible to the artist.
“Andy Warhol was famously guarded about his personal thoughts and opinions,” Rossi told Entertainment Weekly, “That’s one reason his Diaries are such a rare and fascinating window; he could be incredibly raw and emotional as he talked to his diarist over the phone. To fully appreciate the radical vulnerability that Andy shares in the Diaries, I felt that we needed to hear the words in Andy’s own voice.”
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
How the AI Voiceover Was Done
An article from Wired digs deeper into how it was done. The chief concern is an ethical one and also an audience reaction one, mindful of the bruhaha that greeted the “fake” voiceover accompanying Anthony Bourdain documentary Roadrunner.
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
“The Andy Warhol Diaries” main titles, created by Hazel Baird and Elastic
Rossi had been in consultation with the Andy Warhol Foundation about the AI recreation, and the Bourdain doc inspired a disclaimer that appears a few minutes into The Andy Warhol Diaries stating that the voice was created with the Foundation’s permission.
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
“When Andrew shared the idea of using an AI voice, I thought, ‘Wow, this is as bold as it is smart,’” Michael Dayton Hermann, the foundation’s head of licensing, tells Wired.
By being upfront, Rossi’s documentary avoids one of the big issues Roadrunner faced. Viewers know from the start that what they’re hearing is computer-generated.
Warhol did once speak all the things the AI says in the doc — he told them to Hackett — but they weren’t recorded at the time. Does that make a difference?
“[Warhol’s] diaries are written in a really interesting way, almost like they’re meant to be read aloud. They’re in his voice,” says Zohaib Ahmed, the CEO of Resemble AI, which Rossi turned to for the project. “It’s almost like this was an extension of Andy’s work, so we weren’t creating something that was an ethical dilemma for us.”
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
There were challenges. Warhol voice is a monotone built from his Pittsburgh upbringing and years in the New York City art scene — he took pains to be deliberately un-emotive. Plus, there wasn’t a lot of original source material to work from.
When Resemble AI started, it only had about three minutes and 12 seconds of audio data — and needed to create a voice that could read about 30 pages of text.
To do that, explains Wired, Resemble’s AI engine used the phonemes of Warhol’s voice that were in that dataset to predict the phonemes that weren’t in order to create a fairly full voice. That voice was then loaded into the company’s web platform, where Rossi could type in what he wanted the voice to say and then ask the AI to make adjustments until it sounds the way they want it to.
“Being able to have that human involvement is really powerful,” Ahmed says. It even allowed Rossi to shift the emotion or have Warhol say words that required an accent — like, for example, the name of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Ultimately, the AI didn’t do quite everything based on just those few minutes, necessitating Irwin’s voice recording. “We tried models combining 80 to 75 percent of the AI voices and 20 to 15 percent of Bill’s performance,” Rossi tells Wired. “In the end, Andy’s voice throughout the series presents a variation of ranges on this interpolated model.”
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
The Reviews Are In
Reviewers have been favorable. “It turns out, against all odds, that the novelty of it not only works but, in fact, becomes surprisingly moving as the series progresses,” says Art News.
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
For instance, at one point in episode two, Warhol speaks (via the simulated voice) of blushing when Jed Johnson’s parents paid a visit and thanked him for being so nice to their son.
“Warhol — a stoic cipher who tried to speak as little as he could — proves to be a special case, especially as much of the subject matter of the Diaries is highly emotional in ways that the artist himself never was in a clearly articulated way,” notes The Hollywood Reporter’sreview.
THR reviewer Daniel Fienberg thinks Warhol, ever a fan of robotics, would have been amused by the technique. “It never gives the illusion of hearing a real person, but offers a very Warhol-esque flat and ruminative counterpoint to the amusement, bemusement and passionate regard contributed by the interview subjects, who knew him, loved him or, in some cases, dedicated their lives to studying him.”
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
As for the series itself, Art News found it very powerful on the subject of AIDS — “it sets the epidemic well into the context of Warhol’s interest in religious art late in his life.”
When it comes to the big events in Warhol’s life, the entries are generally skeletal or entirely evasive, and Rossi and the assortment of talking heads from Warhol’s life and then his 30+ years of artistic afterlife fill in blanks or explain absences.
“The entries are most interesting, honestly, as expressions of mundane insecurities and celebrations of tiny pleasures, like Warhol’s love of a wide and occasionally strange assortment of very mainstream movies,” writes Fienberg.
“If you’ve ever wanted to “hear” Warhol talk about why he was moved by The NeverEnding Story, this is a documentary for you.”
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
For producer Ryan Murphy, the primary goal of “The Andy Warhol Diaries” was to “recontextualize Warhol as somebody who had loves and lovers.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Andy Warhol in director Andrew Rossi’s “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Cr: Andy Warhol Foundation/Netflix
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“The Dropout” Is a Slow-Motion Car Crash (and We Can’t Look Away)
Hulu’s limited series, “The Dropout,” isn’t the first project to examine Theranos, but showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether takes the topic and engages with the story on a different note by bringing it to a more human level. Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes. Courtesy of HuluAmanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes. Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Hulu’s eight-episode The Dropout, Disney’s adaptation of the ABC podcast series of the same name, is the latest docuseries in a string of stories about tech, startups and wealth gone wrong.
The Dropout stars Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the fraudulent blood-testing startup Theranos. Holmes is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of committing fraud.
It is a riches-to-riches rise to becoming one of the world’s youngest billionaires and the delight in watching her fall that is the fascination for audiences.
The Dropout can be bracketed with Apple TV+’s upcoming WeCrashed series, based on the podcast WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork, and Showtime’s recent Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Uma Thurman. Netflix and Hulu both released Fyre Fest documentaries about the “fake it and they will come” influencer-hyped music non-event, and Netflix’s Inventing Anna, a true story about a young female scam artist, became on of the streamer’s most-watched series.
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Bill Irwin as Channing Robertson and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Rakesh Madhava in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
James Hiroyuki Liao as Edmond Ku in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Laurie Metcalf as Phyllis Gardner and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Netflix viewers spent 196 million hours, according to Deadline, watching Inventing Anna between February 14 and 20, making it Netflix’s most-watched English-language series over a one week period.
“These online streamers keep churning out this content because they know we will watch,” says TechCrunch. “We’re desperate and eager to understand how people can be so corrupted by the promise of money and fame that they will sacrifice their morality.”
Laurie Metcalf as Phyllis Gardner and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 1 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Commentators, including Nancy Jo Sales in The Guardian, explain the vogue, writing “social media has turned us all into scammers, as well as victims of the constant scam being perpetrated on us by tech companies. They promise they will connect us to the world — but their core profit-making plan is actually the tracking and selling of our data. Essentially, we live in the age of the scam.”
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 2 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Michael Ironside as Don Lucas Holmes in episode 2 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
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Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 2 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 2 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
The Dropout is not even the first longform examination of Theranos. It’s already been the subject of a major podcast, a book, and an Alex Gibney documentary, and a feature directed by Adam McKay and starring Jennifer Lawrence called Bad Blood is coming soon to AppleTV+.
When Searchlight Television first approached showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether to work on the project, she was a little skeptical. “I was just like, ‘What is the point of doing a limited series?’” she told The Daily Beast. “Why would we tell this story again? What would I bring to it?”
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Michael Ironside as Don Lucas Holmes in episode 2 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
The solution, she decided, would be to “engage with the story on a more human level.” In Holmes’ biography, the showrunner said, she saw “the story of a young woman in a position of power really kind of struggling with it and trying to figure out who she is in the middle of that.
“That felt like a story that hadn’t been told as much on television,” she said. “You know, it’s not the kind of glossy girlboss, female empowerment version of a female CEO.”
William H. Macy as Richard Fuisz in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Susan Moore Harmon as Helena in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Stephen Fry as Ian Gibbons in episode 3 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Over time, the show’s Elizabeth figures out how to harness her industry’s tokenization of women to her advantage — a brilliant encapsulation of the way that women, too (especially white women), can perpetuate misogyny once they decide it’s to their advantage to do so.
There’s another example of this in recent BBC drama Rules Of The Game, a thriller series set in a mundane office.
As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Waterston as George Shultz, and Kurtwood Smith as Richard. David Boies in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Michael Showalter, who directed four episodes of The Dropout, told Collider, “There is a part of [Holmes] that’s worthy… she was a young woman trying to make a mark in a male-dominated industry, and that that’s something to celebrate. Let’s celebrate that she had this vision, but let’s also see where her integrity went off-road. Let’s see if, as a culture, we can all say that integrity should have a role and a place in the way we do business and the way we treat each other as individuals.”
The “romance” between Holmes and Sunny Balwani, the executive 18 years her senior, was among the most creatively dramatized because the couple kept their private affairs so well hidden. Holmes would later allege in court that he routinely abused her over their 12-year relationship.
“There’s so little information about what that relationship actually was — which, you know, was part of their relationship because they kept it secret for 12 years,” Meriwether said to The Daily Beast. “It felt like such a huge part of the story that we knew very little about. We learned more in her trial, and I think we’re going to learn even more in his trial, which is coming up. But it’s a really complex, toxic relationship.”
Kurtwood Smith as Richard. David Boies and William H. Macy as Richard Fuisz in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz and Kevin Sussman as Mark Roessler in episode 5 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
One of the things the show serves to highlight is how much of an easy ride Theranos got from investors and the press.
“Despite refusing to justify any element of its technology, it took far too long for regulators and officials to really interrogate what was going on,” says Engadget. “I mean, in 2015, Holmes was appointed to the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School! The scale of the fraud, the scale of the lie, became so great that most people just felt that they had to believe it.”
Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
The Dropout ask questions, like how Holmes got “wellness centers” into a chain the size of Walgreens when her tech didn’t work.
“How does that happen?” asks NPR. “Surely, they had the capacity to determine that she wasn’t able to simply put a machine in front of them, prick a finger, and have it perform routine bloodwork.”
The question is not why nobody knew; it’s why the people who knew were not able to stop Holmes’ ascent sooner.
Laurie Metcalf as Phyllis Gardner and William H. Macy as Richard Fuisz in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz and Camryn Mi-young Kim as Erika Cheung in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Sam Waterston as George Shultz and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 6 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
NPR concludes of the show’s depiction, “that more than anything, she’s protected by other people’s greed and pride. Once she has investors who have given her their money, they naturally aren’t eager to hear that the tech is no good, or to have the word spread that the tech is no good. She was deceiving people because she especially wanted to do something huge that would make her the Steve Jobs of health care.”
Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
A lot has changed about our attitude toward tech in the times since movies like The Social Network (2010) and Steve Jobs (2015) were released. The former painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a “tragic hero,” wrote one reviewer in New York Magazine.
Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz and Anne Archer as Charlotte Shultz in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Michaela Watkins as Linda Tanner and Dylan Minnette as Tyler Shultz in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Kurtwood Smith as Richard. David Boies and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Michaela Watkins as Linda Tanner, Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani, and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in episode 7 of “The Dropout.” Cr: Beth Dubber/Hulu
“Now we look at these stories of startup founders with rightful skepticism,” says TechCrunch, “which makes sense in an era when Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears on prime-time television, telling us that Facebook prioritizes profits over public good.”
Reviewers reserve particular praise for Stephen Fry’s performance as Dr. Ian Gibbons, the chemist who worked with Holmes at the start of her career and died by suicide during a patent dispute.
Here’s Engadget: “Fry, towering over the rest of the cast and looking every inch the crusty academic in a world of waxen silicon valley models, acts as the warm and inviting voice of conscience when things start to hit the slide.”
Want more? Listen to the creators and cast talk about what interested and inspired them in the making of the series The Dropout:
Or watch The Dropout cinematographer Michelle Lawler on the Go Creative Show, where she shares the unique opportunities and challenges while filming on location for the hit Hulu series, including how character development effects cinematography, shooting on a stage vs. on location, using 200 astera tubes to light an office, tips for creating eyelights, and more:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“The Batman:” What It Takes to Make a Modern Masterpiece
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“The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
It was always Warner Bros. Picture’s intention for The Batman movie to become a leaping off point for further stories. The Bat-verse would include live-action HBO Max shows about the Penguin and the Gotham police department, as well as a Batman animated series.
So, apart from the attention and pressure of being a relatively quick resurrection of the caped crusader story, the film seemed to be the only catalyst for a new “verse.”
Director Matt Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser create the catalyst for Warner Bros.’ new “Bat-verse” with “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson. Cr: Jonathan Olley/ Warner Bros. Pictures.
There was also a new director and a new lead. Although the eventual director Matt Reeves initially had the boldness to tell Warners that he probably wasn’t the guy they were looking for when the director search stopped at his door.
In their coverage of the new movie, The New York Times wound back the clock to 2016 when the plan was still to make a Batman movie starring the incumbent crime fighter, Ben Affleck.
“The movie would star Affleck as an older, more seasoned version of the character introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Affleck had planned to direct too but then decided against it. But it was still the Affleck approach to the movie on offer when Reeves batted it back to Warner Bros.
Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Jeffrey Wright as Lt. James Gordon and Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Director Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson on the set of “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
“I just didn’t know how I would direct that,” Reeves said. Despite the studio’s interest, he said, “I don’t think you’re going to want me because I wouldn’t do this. And then they asked me what I would do.”
By 2017 they had their answer as he was writing his own script — Affleck had left the project altogether.
But where would Reeves go with the story? He knew what he didn’t want to do, as he told The Motion Picture Academy’s A.frame, “I knew it could not be an origin tale,” Reeves says. “But I still wanted Batman’s arc to be the powerful part of this movie, so I thought I could put him on the trail of a story that is kind of describing the history of Gotham — so to then come back to his origins unexpectedly.”
Robert Pattinson as Batman and Jeffrey Wright as Lt. James Gordon in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman and Peter Sarsgaard as District Attorney Gil Colson in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Jeffrey Wright as Lt. James Gordon and Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Reeves had the shell of a story but needed to ask more questions to drill down and flesh out the details. For instance, he was querying the psychological effect on Batman revisiting the streets where his parents had been murdered. These were potentially questions no one had dealt with before but were thickening up the Batman’s character.
Also, how would a guy dressed in a bat suit be treated by the cops at crime scenes? “What would it really be like if you had a guy going to crime scenes in a cowl and cape?” Reeves posits. “Everyone would be looking at him… What would that do to the guy psychologically?”
“It’s a desperate way for a guy to try to make sense of his life, and it’s actually a kind of a doomed plan,” Reeves says regrading to Bruce Wayne’s mission. “Because every night, he’s going to go out and revisit that primal nightmarish experience that happened to him as a child, and he’s never going to be able to fix it. So, he’s constantly fighting with this beast that he is never going to be able to contain.”
The Hollywood Reporter ventured further into this “other” view of Gotham’s character, even finding some kinship between the warring factions. “From the onset, the Riddler (Paul Dano) is aligned with our perception of Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson), and Bruce Wayne aligned with Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), perpetual orphaned children caught between feeling invisible and wanting to be seen, yet at the mercy of something bigger than any of them can fully fathom.
Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/The Riddler in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
John Turturro as Carmine Falcone in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
“God or Gotham. Reeves grapples with no higher powers than these within The Batman, as he seeks to redefine these characters and fit them into our modern-day Americana, one in which cops are infrequently heroes, political change does not occur without revolution, and the fairy-tale narrative attached to perpetual children and wealthy orphans no longer carries the weight it once did.”
These were the dividing lines, especially from previous films, that Reeves was conjuring up with his granular method of probing in to the 80-year-old story of The Batman.
It also took him on a huge dive into the comics with cinematographer Greig Fraser and star Robert Pattinson, pulling from movies of the 1970s like Alan J. Pakula’s Klute and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, as well as Wong Kar-Wai’s 2004 short film The Hand.
For Fraser, any direction towards noir or even total darkness held no fear for him. He had already shot Zero Dark 30 with some of the final scenes in almost zero light. For him that was like walking a tightrope “…as your choices get narrower and narrower. But how do you justify lighting when there isn’t any in the story?”
He was talking specifically about the raid on Bin Laden’s fortified house where he used soft boxes very high up to act “almost as if the desert’s star light was shining a path for you.”
For The Batman, Fraser had a simple way to gauge the lighting style for the whole movies as he told Variety. “This film was probably the most complicated lighting job that I’ve ever been involved with, for obvious reasons.
“I was putting together a bit of a style guide of all the frames. I’d sit there and I’d flick through the frames half a second each, maybe less. But if I could tell what was going on, then I feel like we succeeded in our quest for simplicity of the frame.
“So I’ve watched this movie a number of times now flicking through on my iPad. It probably takes about five minutes to watch the whole film.”
Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Peter Sarsgaard as District Attorney Gil Colson in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
In fact, Fraser had scoured the internet for images that were dark but easy to see, and he had collected them in a document for his director, and for himself, called “Dark but Light.”
His work on the film has garnered a number of awards and nominations but Fraser is quick to share the credit. “We were very diligent about making sure that we only move the camera when we had to, because it didn’t feel like we had to, to be frank with you.
“We had such great sets. We had such great actors. It’s such a great script. I would ask the question, why do you have to move the camera for no reason?”
Fraser widened his explanation of his shooting style to The Wrap, “I wanted this to be more of an urban noir, and I wanted to make sure that there were pockets of light in every frame.”
Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle and Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman and Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Fraser told IndieWire about how the camera movement reflected and enhanced Batman’s deliberate bearing, “The fun thing to me about Batman is that he has no super powers,” the cinematographer said. “He doesn’t have x-ray vision and he can’t fly. What he has is incredible determination and will and intelligence, so any camera movement conveying that has to be very considered and intentional.”
The Batman’s many qualities have reignited cinema attendance worldwide with more than half a billion dollars’ worth of cinema seats sold already. It has also brought cinematographer Greig Fraser a sizeable set of new fans with his links to science fiction already sealed with his work on Star Wars, Mandalorian and Dune.
But people are wondering if The Batman is the feel-good feature that we wanted or in fact needed right now. The Daily Beast concluded that it actually didn’t matter.
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/The Riddler in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
“In its every nook and cranny, Reeves’ film radiates desperation and terror over a world that’s gone to seed, and which props itself up via comforting nightly news lies about renewal and rebirth that allow its citizens to avoid facing the stark, fetid truth.
“What it does, however, is render The Batman a blistering and beautifully brutal reflection of its era, driven by explosive anger and wrenching dismay.”
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Batman in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Cr: Warner Bros. Pictures
Want more? In the video below, director Matt Reeves, composer Michael Giacchino and lead digital colorist David Cole discuss why Dolby Cinema is the only way to see The Batman the way the filmmakers intended.
“I just wish that there was a way that you could just snap your fingers and then when everyone sees the movie, this is the way it will look,” says Reeves.
Or watch this two-part special from Dolby delving into the film’s sound, music, and cinematography featuring Reeves and Giacchino alongside supervising sound editors Will Files and Douglas Murray, re-recording mixer Andy Nelson, and director of photography Greg Fraser.
Discussing his approach to directing, Reeves says, “You have to become an emotional compass…. Here: I make a movie in my head and a piece of paper — that’s one version of the movie. And it’s a very narrow band of what that movie could be. And then you work with these artists and you want everyone to bring something… And I have to be an emotional compass to say, ‘that idea is great! That idea really works!’ Somebody has to do that. And the way you do that is by immersing yourself into that thing.”
Reeves also discusses the look used for Colin Farrell’s character the Penguin, and how the makeup wasn’t in his original plan but became an undeniable look:
Check out Patrick Tomasso’s review of The Batman as he discusses the plot, cinematography, lighting, and “Michael Giacchino’s BRILLIANT score” in the video below:
Or watch Tomasso’s deep dive into Reeves and Fraser’s approach to bringing The Batman to life, including the lenses they used, their cinematic references, the lighting, color grading, and a new approach to digital cinema using 35mm film. The video essay also does a recreation of The Batman using an anamorphic lens and the Sony A7iv to show how you can apply the principles from the film to your own work:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
“Winning Time” Is a Wild Ride: Here’s How To Remake History
Produced and directed by Adam McKay, HBO’s new docudrama “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” shows how the Lakers changed the way basketball is played. Cr: Warner Media
In the 70s, the business of basketball was more than overshadowed by show business itself, especially in Los Angeles, where Hollywood ruled the roost. At the same time the NBA languished in the background and had all but lost its way.
In fact, Noel Murray’s review of the new HBO docuseries, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, for AV Club, called it a niche league that had a lack of “likeable players — or, to put it in the terms the era’s television executives were using behind closed doors, a lack of white players.”
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss in episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon in episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Jason Clarke as Jerry West in episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
But, by the close of the decade, things started to reverse. Over a decade of “showtime” — the phrase used to describe the team’s relentless style of play and the razzle-dazzle, sports-as-entertainment atmosphere — began with the Lakers winning five NBA championships along the way. “The 1979 NCAA basketball championship broke viewership records, because of the marquee matchup of the intense Indiana farm boy Larry Bird and the flashy Michigan kid Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, both of whom were about to be NBA rookies.”
But the switch-up wasn’t due just to Bird and Magic. Sopan Deb at The New York Times drilled down to pick out other catalysts of change. “The team crossed over into pop culture consciousness in a way no NBA franchise had. It spurred discussions about the place of money, race, celebrity and sex in the game. With their brash new-money owner, Jerry Buss, the Lakers challenged what was then the status quo — which included poor attendance and ratings. They helped save the league.”
HBO’s newest docudrama is based on the book Showtime, by sports journalist Jeff Pearlman, but it is executive producer and pilot director Adam McKay (The Big Short, Don’t Look Up) who arguably gives the show its edge.
Deb describes the style as “Chatty, fast-paced and fourth-wall-breaking. Cuts are frenetic, needles drop hard, and characters frequently deliver commentary and exposition straight to the camera. Grainy film and glitchy video mix with real and faux archival footage, add to the vintage vibes.”
But McKay had a vested interest, “I was a hardcore Celtics fan,” he told Entertainment Weekly’s Derek Lawrence. “I hated the Lakers in the ‘80s — they were the villains. It wasn’t until later that I realized, no, the Celtics were the villains, and the Lakers were actually incredible; they changed the way basketball is played, the way it related to the culture, and the way celebrities were created out of the sport.”
“It involves not kings and queens, but celebrities, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who were changing culture,” said showrunner Max Borenstein, who adapted the Showtime book for television.
Josh Spiegel, at Slash Film, celebrated the cast, especially John C. Reilly as the Lakers owner Jerry Buss, when by all accounts the role was previously promised to Will Ferrell. “Will Ferrell was initially set to play Buss, but was recast due to not looking as much like the late billionaire, the choice frankly makes sense,” Spiegel concluded.
Other standout performances come from Adrien Brody and Jason Segel, as Lakers coaches Pat Riley and Paul Westhead, along with Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Tamera Tomakili as Cookie Keely in episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
“It could all be too showy and distracting, but the performances pull you in, and keep everything afloat,” says NPR’s David Bianculli. He praises actors who “can play for comedy and for drama with equal effectiveness”, while those portraying the well-known Lakers stars “pull off their portrayals with exceptional flair, both off and on the court.”
“Another nice surprise is how much attention Winning Time devotes to its women,” Bianculli adds. “From company employees to players’ mothers, wives and girlfriends, they’re all given their own chances to shine, and to have their say.”
In a wide-ranging discussion on The Hollywood Reporter podcast, TV’s Top Five, Borenstein opens up about his pitch to turn Pearlman’s book into a TV show and balancing fact versus fiction when it comes to the portrayal of Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar.
“Sometimes we’re compositing characters for convenience and dramatic ideas or we’re creating composite characters,” says Borenstein. “Sometimes it’s a matter of we know certain tips of the iceberg — who had relationship with Magic — and we know aspects of that relationship but they’re not a public figure, so we’d create someone new.”
Deadspin’s Lee Escobedo interviewed Borenstein, who said he was keen to “avoid the cinematic pitfalls of other basketball-centric movies by focusing on the cultural epoch the Lakers were reborn into.”
Borenstein explained how he saw this bigger picture, “To me, it is the perfect way to approach this incredible epic about the American Dream. It’s a moment about a cultural transformation in the modern NBA. A lens we can use to look at this incredible era in our country’s history and our recent history.”
The showrunner encapsulated what he meant, depicting the famous two rookies in terms that the TV advertisers could work with. “In comes Magic Johnson. And on the other coast, Larry Bird. Two guys who were perceived to be as different as two people could be. Magic is massively charismatic. Built for cameras. Instantly gregarious to reporters. And, who happened to be black. And you had a guy in Larry Bird who happened to be white, who was an equally great player, but dour, not interested in media and didn’t have natural charisma with the media that Magic did,” Borenstein said.
“It’s a story about the business of professional sports, that is an epic, not about a single season but rather a dynasty.”
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in episode 10 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in episode 7 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Jason Segal as Paul Westhead in episode 4 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Borenstein also had an unusual comparison to make for his show, as he told Jamie Burton at Newsweek. “I’ve compared it, not tonally or in any other way, to The Crown or a show like The Crown, in the sense that it’s based in fact.”
He continued: “It’s inspired by a true story. Obviously, there are liberties taken because it’s a dramatization and we have an incredible cast playing these characters.”
Producer Rodney Barnes is sure that they are giving the fans what they want. He told The Hollywood Reporter’s Lacey Rose that the moments that were wanted are there, “…the seminal moments,” he said, “the hug between Magic and Kareem, the championships, the passes, the skyhook.”
Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in episode 2 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
“I’m old enough to have seen a lot of sports-themed movies and TV shows. And more often than not, the players are relegated to a one-dimensional idea,” Barnes tells Chris Koseluk in an interview for the Motion Picture Association’s The Credits. “That’s the funny one. That’s the bad one. That’s the surly one. And the narrative is about the coach, the owner, or a particular player. Here, we got an opportunity to really get into the nuance of the human part of being a professional athlete.”
At the same time, the writers were careful not to do a disservice to some of basketball’s biggest stars, Barnes tells Koseluk: “We’re fans of these guys. We appreciate what they accomplished. You’re trying to make this a love letter — a show of appreciation more so than anything else. So, it’s a delicate balance of storytelling, while still being true to the times and respectful at all times.”
Adrien Brody as Pat Riley in episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Vulture‘s review by Jen Chaney seems to get hung up on the visual aesthetic. “The visual patina might best be described as Late-’70s Sepia Haze. It is purposely grainy as a nod to its era and washed out frequently by the blinding L.A. sun. Even if you watch Winning Time in HD, it will still look like an old glitchy videotape or a 1980 broadcast coming through with cloudy reception on a TV with rabbit ears.”
But Chaney doubles back when the actual basketball begins. “I love that this series devotes minutes to observing strategy sessions and Laker practices where the guys try to undo years of playing traditional, slower basketball.
“WinningTime shows us the late nights spent studying plays, early morning shootarounds, and locker-room arguments that constitute a day at the Lakers’ office. That is much appreciated.”
Jason Clarke as Jerry West in episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
The “glitchy, 1980s” look of the series is of course very deliberate, but actually has its roots in the production lacking any NBA permission to use basketball archival footage. IndieWire’s Bill Desowitz takes an in-depth look at the process that McKay, co-cinematographers Todd Banhazl (Hustlers) and Mihai Malaimare Jr. (The Harder They Fall), and Oscar-nominated editor Hank Corwin (Don’t Look Up) used to “evoke the ‘80s as a cultural snapshot” in the series.
According to Desowitz, Banhazl decided to emulate the look of Kodak’s long-defunct Ektachrome for the present day ‘70s and ‘80s, and the even older Kodachrome look for the ‘50s and ‘60s. “Playing into Corwin and McKay’s mix-and-match archival style, the DP shot a variety of film stocks — 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm color and black-and-white — and even incorporated long outdated tube video technology (Ikegami ITC-730A and HL-79 cameras),” says Desowitz.
Banhazl push processed all the 35mm color film to make it grainier and add contrast, underexposed the negative so that it was dirtier, instructed the film lab not to dust-bust the negative before scanning (thus leaving dirt particles on the neg), then pushed the look even further digitally in the grade with Company 3 colorist Walter Volpatto. They also shot a lot on 8mm, sometimes putting a pistol grip on the 8mm camera to give footage a home movie look.
“They took this even further by intercutting 8mm or Ikegami footage during present-day scenes to extend the archival look for greater intimacy and vulnerability,” says Desowitz.
DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon and Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in episode 3 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
Banhazl was recently recognized for his work on Episode 5, “Pieces of a Man,” with an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One Hour).
“Our scripts had a kaleidoscopic, maximalist bravado and we wanted that reflected in the images. We based the looks on the dominant advertising styles of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, to reinterpret our collective memory of what America looked like to Americans at the time,” he tells IndieWire’s Erik Adams and Chris O’Falt.
“Our main look was an older 35mm Ektachrome reversal film, and mixing into that we used 8mm to recreate a sense of time and place, documentary-style 16mm for basketball and for emotional accents within scenes, as well as vintage Ikegami tube video cameras from the 1980s to recreate the famous basketball games on TV as well as during narrative scenes to see our characters in a more vulnerable way contrasting with the more bold 35mm. We also used black and white film for special shots within scenes for jazzy accents.
“The idea was to blur the line between documentary realism and the iconic mythic worlds that these characters inhabited. I always thought of the visual style of the show as a collage of textures, images, and ideas: an American culture mixtape.”
Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson and Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in episode 5 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
It all goes to show necessity can often a wellspring for creativity. One has to wonder what the show would have looked like if there was co-operation from the subjects involved.
Not that Borenstein seems too bothered. According to Alexandra Del Rosario at Deadline, the series co-creator addressed the lack of cooperation from the Lakers themselves and the Buss family during a CTAM session, saying, “We made this show as fans with a tremendous amount of respect and love for all these characters of the NBA and Lakers and I think it hopefully shows on screen. I can only imagine how strange it must be to have a movie made about your life, or show made about any aspect of your life so I never presume what people will or won’t do but on our end, this was made with great love and appreciation.”
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson, and Kirk Bovill as Donald Sterling in episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
IndieWire’s Samantha Bergeson digs deeper, reporting that the show’s team has made clear that the NBA and athletes featured in the series aren’t profiting from Winning Time. “HBO confirmed that NBA league lawyers have reached out to the network regarding the use of official NBA logos and trademarks,” says Bergeson, while a Lakers representative has said: “We have no comment as we are not supporting nor involved with this project.”
“The real-life Johnson previously said he was “not looking forward” to the premiere of Winning Time, and is instead focusing on his own upcoming four-part Apple TV+ docuseries, They Call Me Magic,” she adds.
“Former teammate Abdul-Jabbar also noted that “the story of the Showtime Lakers is best told by those who actually lived through it,” Bergeson continues. “Both Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson are participating in a ‘Lakers-sanctioned’ Hulu docuseries to be released in late 2022.”
Star Quincy Isaiah and co-creator Jim Hecht are keen to counter this judgement from the athletes.
John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss and Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson in episode 1 of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” Cr: Warner Media
“I just know what we put into it, the respect and the admiration that we have, and I just hope that that comes across,” Isaiah tells Kirsten Chuba at The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s about 1979 and a rookie at 20 years old moving from Michigan to L.A. I hope that people understand that and that who we’re talking about in the show isn’t the man he is today.”
“We wanted to have a perspective that was objective, and there was always this thought that if you go to one person it becomes their story,” Hecht tells Chuba. “I love The Last Dance, love it, but that’s Michael [Jordan]’s story, and this… is a lot of people’s story and has a different perspective on it. That’s what makes it a good drama because you should root for all of our characters when they’re in competition with each other, when only one can win, and they’re all coming from some place real.”
Want more? In the video below you can watch former Laker Rick Fox in conversation with Quincy Isaiah and executive producers Adam McKay and Max Borenstein about the first episode of the series:
To fine-tune the look of “Winning Time,” Company 3 Hollywood senior colorist Walter Volpatto evokes the feel of older imaging technology.
May 12, 2022
Posted
March 6, 2022
Life Is a Mess But That’s the Point: Making “The Worst Person in the World”
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Renate Reinsve plays Julie, an almost-30 woman who still hasn’t figured out what she wants to do with her life, in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Who would have thought it would be Scandinavia once again looking to teach the world more about the human condition? Last year we had Denmark’s Another Round, scooping the Best International Feature Oscar and BAFTA awards, and advising us on how alcohol probably isn’t the best stimulant to base your decision-making on. A US version is in development starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Now we have The Worst Person in the World from Norway. A film that Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian describes as “the kind of film we’ve all seen done so badly that it’s an unexpected treat to see it done well and to realize that its themes are very important.”
The film is nominated for an Academy Award twice over: once for Best Original Screenplay for writer Eskil Vogt and director Joachim Trier, and again for Best International Feature. If The Worst Person in the World wins the original screenplay Oscar, Trier is sure to credit the film’s star, Renate Reinsve, for whom he wrote the part of Julie.
Renate Reinsve as Julie and Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Bradshaw himself is also very enamored, writing, “Renate Reinsve is the actor who takes on this role and she takes off like a rocket, deserving star status to rival Lily James or Alicia Vikander for her tremendously mature, sensitive and sympathetic performance.” The Cannes jury agreed with him when they awarded Reinsve Best Actress for the role, marking the first time a Norwegian actress has won anything at the film festival.
In the movie, Julie is facing the difficult crossroads age of 30 and is bewildered by her indecision. Scott Roxoborough at The Hollywood Reporter describes her deadlock. “Julie is an almost-30 woman who still hasn’t figured out what she wants to do with her life. She studied medicine, then dropped it for photography. Now she works in a bookshop. Her love life is similarly ambivalent.”
Julie moves in with Aksel, a graphic artist who is ten years older than she is and looking to settle down. Julie is pretty sure she’s not ready and randomly meets cute and carefree barista Eivind, who gets her dreaming of another life.
If you think the plot harks back to a bygone era then you’d be right. Director Joachim Trier takes his inspiration from a golden age of romantic comedies, “The best of romantic comedies can teach us something about being human,” he philosophizes. “If you think about Philadelphia Story by George Cukor, Katherine Hepburn has to choose between two different lives through two different loves. Julie has to accept herself and to love herself and not feel so miserable.
Fred Topel at Deadline pushed the director on his love for Cukor, “The films George Cukor made, like The Philadelphia Story, were films not only about finding the right partner but existential films, films that dealt with important life choices,” Trier said. “The thing about it was to try to create something that had levity, and hopefully humor and at the same time had also some serious drama in it.”
After a detour into English-language territory (2015’s Louder Than Bombs, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Gabriel Byrne and Isabelle Huppert) and genre cinema (the 2017 horror thriller Thelma), Trier is very much back in his wheelhouse with The Worst Person in the World. The film is lighter and more playful than his first two films — it has moments that feel like a Hollywood rom-com — but he still knows when to go dark.
Trier explained his dark side to Roxoborough: “Yes, we’ve been called an anti-romantic romantic comedy or a romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies. I happen to love some romantic comedies — not all of them — but the best films, for me, are the ones that force us to look at ourselves, existentially and emotionally and in terms of identity.
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Herbert Nordrum as Eivind and Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
“We wanted to make a modern romantic comedy where it’s not about a woman finding a man in order to find purpose in her life, but to see how being with different people exposes her — to her anxiety, to her fear of commitment and to tease out all the comedy and chaos that comes out from that.”
Trier, who like the character Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), is in his forties, admits he’s a personal filmmaker, but also hopes that both he and Vogt are just good observers of people.
“Their goal was to be humanist and open in telling a story that decidedly isn’t theirs,” says Gregory Ellwood in the Los Angeles Times. “In their view, romantic comedies haven’t been taken seriously as the great existential film genre that it is. They wanted to play with genres and twist them. And, perhaps, that opened the door to explore their own experiences.”
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
“I know who this Julie is, I know who this Aksel is, I feel them in me. I feel them in people that I’ve been close to,” Trier says. “I think it’s that way for the actors too. That’s my job as a director. How can they reveal themselves in a part that I wrote, so that it feels like they are that character?”
In a Q&A for The Hollywood Reporter, Reinsve tells Robert Koehler: “We did a lot of preparation before filming,” which included “discussions about life and love and philosophy and our own experiences, what Julie thought, the physical side of her character. Since we were exploring five years of Julie’s life, I had to be very specific about how she moved and felt from one moment to the next. I gained a new way of acting through this because Joachim asked me to let go and lose all control, which was very scary. He asked me to be very open to what happens between the characters, because the [movie’s] main dynamic is what happens between them.”
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
The actress adds, “the whole process was very collective, (since) everyone was so taken with the script and the multi-dimensional characters. We were all very passionate, and that’s because Joachim is a very good leader and a really good filmmaker. He makes his whole team very ambitious but also calm and safe.”
In the Film At Lincoln Center podcast, NYFF director of programming Dennis Lim is joined by Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve, and Anders Danielsen Lie to discuss their latest film, The Worst Person in the World, a Main Slate selection of the 59th New York Film Festival:
“This film is a character piece about Julie; I did not want to make a general statement about what it means to be a woman today, that would be impossible,” Trier tells Variety’s Elsa Keslassy. “The fact of her being a woman eventually comes in to play by itself, through trying to portray truthful situations with humor and satire, and different things that I have experienced, seen or imagined. I don’t have so much control when I write, my co-writer Eskil Vogt and I try to find interesting ideas and we try to explore them truthfully. The great thing about art is that it doesn’t have to be an analysis or sociological study: We can try to tell something honest about one person, and out of that, there may be something bigger to think about.
“Some of the questions we are asking in the film are existential and I guess could apply to all people,” the director adds. “This film deals with how relationships mirror our existential expectations of life. In our culture, we are brought up to expect love to be the place where we fulfill ourselves, and the same with careers.”
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Trier tells Andrew Bundy of The Playlist that Reinsve contributed quite a lot to her character’s development. “We [Trier and Vogt] showed her an early draft and she provided feedback,” he explains. “It’s a delicate thing to talk about these days. We’re having very valuable conversations that we must have about ideas of gender and representation in art. I have to say that I’ve written men and women before — old and young people who are quite different from me — but I believe as an artist that’s my duty: to try to be truthful and, from myself, try and find a way to understand someone that is not myself, which is the character. The dialog you have between actors and collaborators, that’s the place where we explore something together and question things. It’s not like I’m sitting on a high horse pretending to know the answer. I wanted to tell this story. I always feel that I am all of the characters, and I am none of the characters. It was fun because I loved Julie as a character. She means a lot to me.”
Variety’s Ben Croll observes that a chapter structure allowed Trier and Vogt to take bigger swings between humor and pathos, covering years on end with one segment and spending the subsequent one over the course of a single, meaningful night.
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
“I like the idea that one life consists of many short stories,” says Trier. “The literary form made it possible to have all these moments and fragments from a longer period. Julie is somehow awaiting her great destiny, waiting for fate to intervene; so putting that into a novelistic scale would mirror that sense of anticipation — and disappointment too.”
The Atlantic’s David Sims asks: “Could this intriguing young woman really be the worst person in the world?
“The Worst Person in the World” director Joachim Trier. Cr: Oslo Pictures
“Of course not,” he says, “but Trier quickly lays out why the audience might roll their eyes at Julie’s aimlessness, showing how her initial plans to become a doctor morphed into studying psychology, a career prospect she then abandoned to pursue professional photography after scrolling through her iPhone camera roll.
“So perhaps Julie is something of a flibbertigibbet,” Sims adds. “She’s also self-possessed, intelligent, and wryly insightful, all conveyed through Reinsve’s sparkling performance.”
Herbert Nordrum as Eivind and Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Trier also wanted The Worst Person in the World to be visually epic.
He shot on 35mm film to capture it. “I think when people say that closeups belong on television, I disagree,” Trier said. “I think to be intimate, close to characters on a big screen is a unique experience. To have the right skin tones and the right colors, I shoot on 35.
“We always wanted to make a warm film shot in 35mm with more color, with scenes that almost feel like a musical without actually being in a musical, you know what I mean? That’s how we approached it.”
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel and Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel and Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Trier had in fact asked his cinematographer, Kasper Tuxen, to make “a visual feast” of the film’s look. The director wanted to welcome people back to watching films in a theater, and the look was a kind of reward. “He is Danish; he’s worked with several great directors like Mike Mills and Gus Van Sant,” he said of Tuxen’s work. “We are from the same generation and have admired each other’s work for years but it’s the first time I’m working with him. When he came to Norway, he shot photos every half hour to study the Norwegian light that he loves.”
The Worst Person in the World is made with Trier’s characteristic freewheeling style, full of voiceovers, digressions, gags, and unexpected swerves. Oslo becomes the back drop. “It’s a film about time, ultimately. It also hopefully leaves space for an audience to engage it. I wanted to make a warm embrace of a film, and I want there to be hope in it even though it’s quite sad at times,” he told Mark Asch at Film Comment.
“An important guide was Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Julie needs to find a space of her own, where she can tolerate herself and not escape through the contact of others.”
Renate Reinsve as Julie in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
Scandinavia and its filmmaking heritage was very much in evidence during a “free talk” at the New York Film Festival, where director Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island) discussed a shared love of Ingmar Bergman with Trier.
Trier first encountered the iconic director in his mid-twenties, reports The Playlist’s Isaac Feldberg, and was most struck by the “ruthless proximity” of his fascination with human relationships. “The art of Bergman is the art of the closeup,” explained Trier, “of pushing the camera up against the human being and understanding that you can observe a person as intimately as possible with a camera and you’ll never penetrate, quite, what that character is.”
Watch the NYFF talk with Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve, and Anders Danielsen Lie on The Worst Person in the World:
The core of the film is according to Brianna Zigler in Paste, the idea that in life, figuring things out is integral to being, not becoming. “To constantly change and evolve is to be alive. We are meant to be as malleable in spirit as we are in flesh, but to stay in one place or free oneself from the other is not indicative of a life less lived either way,” says Zigler. “Thus the title of the film is a cheeky one, a phrase with which Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), not Julie, refers to himself at one point in the film, when the perspective crosses over very briefly to his (and which reminded me of the similarly fleeting, funny perspective shift in Janicza Bravo’s Zola). Eivind felt like the world’s worst person when he began to drift from his girlfriend, Sunniva (Maria Grazia Di Meo), whose noble, newfound environmentally conscious pursuits in sustainability created too much of a fissure in the lives they each wanted to lead.
“It’s true that such a thing can make you feel like the worst person in the world — too selfish, too unstable, not generous or understanding enough,” Zigler continues. “A little too fickle and imperfect, just like this film.”
Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel in director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” Cr: Oslo Pictures
“At the end of the day, all three of [the main characters] feel like the worst person in the world,” Trier reveals to Cineuropa’s Jan Lumholdt.
“Aksel was easy to write for me and for Eskil Vogt,” the director explains. “Through him, we could self-deprecatingly foul our own nests a little, but also address more serious issues like the loss of time and identity. We then gradually found that Julie was the biggie. Her experiences and emotions brought many problems that we could identify with: kids or no kids, feeling adult or not, existential stuff that became the central theme. Then Eivind turns up and messes things up.”
Want more? Watch director Joachim Trier on The New York Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene, where he discusses that incredible scene where time stands still, and how the production had passersby join in toward the end, creating a humanistic rather than supernatural feel:
You can also watch Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie discuss the making of The Worst Person in the World in a Q&A accompanying a special sneak preview of the film at Film at Lincoln Center:
Or check out Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve in this Q&A for the Nordic & Baltic Oscar Contenders series at Scandinavia House:
You can also watch “A Beginner’s Guide to Joachim Trier,” from Little White Lies, a video essay that looks back at Trier’s early career:
Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.
Let’s Not Discount the Pretty Genius Production of “Jackass”
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Some critics are claiming that Jackass, and especially the latest entry in Jackass Forever, should be seen on par with Buster Keaton and the classics of silent era comedy. Are they serious?
Over at Hyperallergic, Juan Barquin makes the case that the Jackass series deserves serious recognition as documentary art.
Wee Man in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Steve-O, Eric Manaka, Jasper, Dave England, Johnny Knoxville, and Chris Pontius in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Chris Pontius, Eric André, Rachel Wolfson, and Eric Manaka in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Preston Lacy, Dave England, Steve-O, Danger Ehren, Zach Holmes, and Jasper on the set of director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Jasper, Danger Ehren, Zach Holmes, Eric Manaka, Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Steve-O, and Dave England in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Rachel Wolfson and Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Danger Ehren, Danielle O’Toole, Steve-O, Dave England, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Zach Holmes, Chris Pontius, Jasper, Eric André, and Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
He argues that the pranks of Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine and company are a direct line from the slapstick of revered cinema comedians Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges.
What’s more, the creators are well aware of this legacy.
“Jackass Number Two (2006) closes with an elaborate musical sequence that references everything from Keaton (with a direct recreation of the house gag) to Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams dance numbers,” Barquin contends.
Knoxville tells Hyperallergic, “When we’re in the middle of making it, we’re not in the moment of reflection — we are in the right now, because you have to be.”
That leads Barquin into a rhapsody: “The refreshing simplicity of [the show’s] gaze, the efficiency with which it presents its truly wild assortment of stunts — this is the true appeal,” he writes. “As documentary, these films aren’t quite vérité — some scenes are obviously staged. But even those segments have a bracing immediacy that lets the viewer play along.
Machine Gun Kelly, Johnny Knoxville, and Steve-O in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Dave England in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Jasper, Chris Pontius, and Producer Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Jasper, Sean “Poopies” McInerny, Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man, Steve-O, Zach Holmes, Tory Belleci and Eric Manaka in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, and Rachel Wolfson in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Johnny Knoxville, Sean “Poopies” McInerny, Rachel Wolfson and Steve-O in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
“Regardless of how much Steve-O or Wee Man may talk to the camera, these are actual human beings risking their well-being for the sake of laughs, and audiences are drawn to this realism, no matter how heightened and performative it may be.”
Not only did Jackass take on the legacy of silent cinema’s stuntmen, but it also presaged the onslaught of prank and joke videos across social media, according to Barquin. The “DIY daredevils” that appear all over YouTube, and TikTok have their archetype in Jackass.
Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Dave England, Chris Pontius, P.K. Subban, and Danger Ehren in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Zach Holmes, Dave England, Eric Manaka, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Steve-O, Jasper, and Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy, Steve-O, “Dark Shark” Dave England, Zach Holmes, Eric Manaka, Jasper, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, and Danger Ehren in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Danger Ehren and Johnny Knoxville in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Zach Holmes and Jasper in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Zach Holmes in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
Danger Ehren in director Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass Forever.” Cr: Paramount Pictures/MTV Entertainment Studios
“A great deal of what the crew does feels like something anyone could replicate, from trying to light a fart on fire while underwater, to aiming everything from a hockey puck to a baseball at somebody’s groin,” Barquin says. “Anyone could pick up their cellphone and film their friends engaging in such idiotic behavior, which lends the show and films a sense of familiarity.”
Yet he is not an outlier in lending Jackass critical appreciation. Mark Kermode, perhaps the UK’s most influential film critic, also found something refreshingly honest about the new movie’s approach to inflicting pain on camera. Kermode also pointed to the unusual degree of male frontal nudity — repeated across the show’s history — as a rare instance of equality when female nudity is usually foregrounded on screen. The penis is also treated as an appendage for laughs.
That’s the point that The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw also makes in his favorable review of the film.
“In Jackass Forever, the penis is shown repeatedly, explicitly and in a way that’s weirdly the opposite of macho. Its vulnerability and absurdity is what comes across. It’s like an exotic, strange creature…”
“This isn’t a Mensa convention!” says one player in the film. “Is that disingenuous?” poses Bradshaw. “Isn’t there, in fact, some advanced showbiz intelligence and surrealist savvy in the way Jackass is set up and edited?”
“Belle:” Making a Movie For and With the Metaverse
A spin on the classic “Beauty and the Beast,” Director Mamoru Hosoda’s animated feature “Belle” follows a lonely teen who becomes a global singing star with her alter ego in the online world of “U.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
“You can’t start over in reality, but you can start over in U,” a narrator promises at the start of Belle, a refreshing new take on the metaverse as a sanctuary for young people.
This is the Japanese animated feature from director Mamoru Hosoda about a lonely teenage girl who becomes a global singing star through her alter ego in the online world of “U.” In a meta twist, the hero of Belle can be followed on Instagram.
Belle does not gloss over the harmful aspects of digital life such as online abuse, viral gossip and doxing (publicly revealing personal information), writes Steve Rose in The Guardian, “But, rather than portraying the online world as a place of cruelty and corporate overreach, it suggests it could be one of sanctuary, even salvation, especially for young people.”
Vulture critic Alison Willmore puts it succinctly: “Belle is an explicit attempt to wed the fairy tale with the high tech, retelling Beauty and the Beast by way of social media.”
In interview with The Verge, Hosoda explains his idea:
“In Beauty and the Beast, the beast obviously has this very vicious and violent-looking exterior, but what’s inside is quite different. In a similar way, with the invention of the internet, people have the version of ourselves that exists in reality and another projection that exists in the internet. So, there’s a similar duality happening, and I thought that would allow the narrative, and a lot of those themes, to come forward.”
The creator of Digimon (2000) and Summer Wars (2009) claims he had never heard the term “metaverse” until after Belle’s release, he says. His inspiration was watching his five-year-old daughter growing up in a world where things like smartphones and social media have always existed.
He told The Guardian, “Grownups see the internet and we think, ‘This is reality, and that’s not reality,’ but for young people it’s more: ‘This is the real world and that’s another world.’ It’s just as real and just as valuable, and how you behave in that online world is also part of reality. This is the new world they find themselves in, and it’s all about how they create that world for themselves.”
The metaverse may be a wild frontier, but here at NAB Amplify we’ve got you covered! Hand-selected from our archives, here are some of the essential insights you’ll need to expand your knowledge base and confidently explore the new horizons ahead:
Elaborating on this in interview with Polygon, Hosoda said he believes the internet has emerged as much more of as a reflection of our own reality now that every generation is using it.
“We have a lot of our own issues that we have in our present, real society that have been transferred into the internet, like the toxicity and fake news and a lot of these kind of negative aspects.
“I feel, because of that, a lot of other films try to project the internet in a much more negative light. But I want to help younger generations come face to face with all these issues that we know exist in the internet and overcome them, to somehow still turn it into a much more positive space where they can do a lot of things.”
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
In thinking how to capture this visually he devised a world “that doesn’t necessarily have an up or a down, a left or a right,” he told The Verge. “It’s packed with these skyscraper-like structures. It feels a little more cramped. Not quite as open as it did in my previous films. It really feels like the center of this world, and it’s hard to tell where the horizon starts and where it ends. That was the visual translation of what I felt the internet has evolved into.”
To design Belle’s metaverse, Hosoda recruited British architect and illustrator Eric Wong after coming across some of Wong’s detailed fantasy cityscapes online.
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“Belle’s U is a vast linear city made up of geometric skyscraper-like forms,” describes Rose. “Working in the evenings between his full-time job, Wong took inspiration from existing places such as New York City and Central Park, but also from movies such as Kubrick’s 2001.”
The director also collaborated with animator Jin Kim (Frozen, Tangled, Big Hero 6) on the film’s character designs, and Cartoon Saloon’s Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart on the background art.
He told Polygon that they wanted to have an international background reflected in Belle’s designs.
Director Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle.” Cr: Toho Co., Ltd.
“I think there’s not too many interactions between US-based animation studios and animation production culture and Japan or other overseas-based animation studios, so I wanted to help change that in some ways because entertainment is shifting to this much more global medium of ideas.”